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This is a view into the server rack, where the server with my website is.
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My website is stored on the server in the middle of the picture.
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Everyone, who, like the author, actively runs a website, occasionally uploads data to a server, from which you can call up the website from places all over the world. Such a server is almost always run by a more or less big service organisation which provides such a server for gain. Those servers are not rarely located in datacenters in far-off cities and far away from the offices of the sevice organisations. Outsiders are not allowed to enter those datacenters. The website kleinmexiko.de, the subject of which is daily life in Bremen/ Gemany, is hosted on a server in a datacenter in a somewhat inhospitable industrial area in Bremen. I asked the managers of my web hosting provider whether they were willing to show me the server where my web pages are. A few days ago I was allowed to look around the data center.
The datacenter and the office of my web hosting provider are located on the second floor of an austere building which in no small part consists of large factory halls. When Hendrik Lilienthal opened the armor-plated door to the datacenter, I was confronted by a noisy roar. This roar was caused by big air cooling system , which reduces the waste heat of the computers to a level where the damageable devices stay intact. It is difficult to incorporate such big cooling systems into ordinary office blocks.
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Apart from safety aspects, that's one of the reasons, why datacenters and offices, from where the datacenters are managed, are not rarely spatially divided or even situated in different buildings.. Only this way a good performance and maximal reliability of the servers can be ensured. Among others, further safeguarding measures are an emergency power supply, which can bridge a power failure, a fire alarm system, protection by a safeguarding service company, an elaborate firewall, which protects the servers against hacker attacks, and a text message system, which indicates failures around the clock.
The server, where kleinmexiko.de is stored, is an unspectacular flat black box , which is in a tall cabinet with a glas door. In this cabinet are nineteen other unspectacular flat black boxes. And beside this server cabinet are more cabinets with unspectacular black boxes. The website kleinmexiko.de takes up 0.04 per mille of the utilized disk space of the server. The neighboring websites on the server are on average seventy times as big as kleinmexiko.de 'Little Mexiko' (= 'Klein Mexiko') remains true to its name. In contrast to the country Mexico things are calm in the digital country 'Little Mexiko' - no troubled frontier zone, no gunfights, instead of that there are pointedly unspectacular texts and b-w photographs in a multiply safeguarded environment.
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Please also read
The advantages and disadvantages of an own website
Charlie Dittmeier's report about internet problems in Phnom Penh. The report is dated August 23 2008. The link leads to the latest entry of the diary. Please scroll down.
The international poster organisation Loesje has started a project to train young people from all over Europe and Asia in how to organise and coordinate information campaigns about the Millennium Development Goals.
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These goals are set by the United Nations to fight poverty and to improve living standards world wide.
Next issue 'The Daily Groove'
March 5 2010
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We would like to point out that we translated articles from German into English for the purpose of service. We would like to make it clear that the German translations are deciding, because the articles are directed to users who live in Germany.
Wir möchten darauf hinweisen, dass wir zu Servicezwecken englische Übersetzungen vorgenommen haben. Klarstellen möchten wir, dass maßgeblich die deutsche Übersetzung ist. Grund dessen ist, dass wir uns an in Deutschland ansässige Nutzer wenden.
Please also read Cats Talk (45)
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place marker for advertisement
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