Customer Success Story
Network Diversity Helps Simple Helix Keep Collocation Services Accessible 24/7
Simple Helix, an upstart collocation and managed IT services provider, fits right in with Huntsville, Alabama’s heritage as an engineering and scientific powerhouse. Its Tier 3 data center is built to meet the compute, storage, and networking needs of the scientific elite. Juniper networking powers its data center and regional fiber network
Offered
A locally owned alternative for Tier 3 data center services
Enabled
Organizations to quickly add virtual servers and compute cycles as needed
Delivered
An innovative advantage by providing total control over data center facility and regional fiber ring
Founded in 2007, Simple Helix was an innovative pioneer in the Web hosting space. In 2016, Simple Helix expanded its business by building the region’s first Tier 3 collocation data center. The company invested heavily in the best available technology to provide cloud services, managed IT services, collocation, and fiber connectivity. A 4.5-megawatt facility is the hub for Simple Helix’s robust offerings, featuring two independent data halls, each with its own dedicated power and cooling equipment.
“The solutions we offer provide our customers with flexible options to solve the unique challenges they face,” says Tracy Collins, CEO at Simple Helix. “From space travel to national defense to cutting-edge biotechnology, the Huntsville community leads the charge in solving some of the most complex challenges on the planet. Since we’re in an engineering, science-first town, we built our business with a highly technical and knowledgeable customer in mind.”
Attention to details and investing in the best possible technology sets Simple Helix apart from its competitors. Customers from every type of industry recognize that the highly resilient data center design provides a unique environment for their businesses. Simple Helix’s fully redundant, mirrored systems guard against downtime and business disruption.
Simple Helix chose Juniper for its data center routing and switching solutions. The Simple Helix team knew Juniper and had positive experiences with all the big—and little—things that make a difference.
“Juniper has always provided excellent support services,” says Fordham.
The Simple Helix team appreciates the engineering simplicity of Juniper. “We like the operational hierarchy of Junos OS, and the ease of operations,” says Fordham. “With Junos OS, working with one MX Series router, for example, isn’t that different than working with a QFX Series switch. The similarity makes configuration and deployment much simpler.”
The 10Gb/40GbE Juniper Networks QFX5100 Switch serves as the spine of the data center network fabric, with the Juniper Networks EX4300 Ethernet Switch serving as leaf nodes. Deployed in a Virtual Chassis Fabric switching architecture, interconnected switches operate and are managed as a single device. The Juniper Networks MX960 Universal Routing Platform provides high-performance and scalable routing at the edge.
Simple Helix built in high levels of resiliency and redundancy everywhere. “Juniper was one of the few providers that had the reliability specifications that met our needs,” says Scott McDaniel, vice president of technology at Simple Helix.
As the high-tech data center makes a sweet home for itself in Huntsville, Simple Helix is looking toward future expansion. Simple Helix continues to invest in expanding all of its offerings to meet the needs of its growing customer base.
Alabama’s fast-growing commerce center and dynamic tech hub is embracing Simple Helix’s customer-first mission and fast growth strategy. “We’re primed for decades of healthy growth and Juniper is a great match to help us support the tech and business needs of our highly specialized customer base,” says Collins.
The Products
MX960
The SDN-enabled MX960 Universal Routing Platform is a high performance, carrier-grade, multiservice edge platform with unprecedented scale for service provider and cloud applications. The MX960 enables inline MACsec support without performance penalties on 10, 40 GbE and 100 GbE, and delivers 12 Tbps of system capacity in a 12 slot chassis supporting dense 100 GbE, 400 GbE interfaces. Similar to the other MX Series Universal Router Platforms, the MX960 has extensive carrier-grade capabilities.
QFX5100
The QFX5100 line of top-of-rack 10/40GbE switches for the data center offers low latency, deployment versatility, and rich automation features. These switches provide universal building blocks for industry-standard architectures such as spine-and-leaf fabrics.
EX3400
The EX3400 line of Ethernet switches are a cost-effective solution for today’s most demanding converged data, voice, and video enterprise access networks.
EX4600
The EX4600 Ethernet Switch offers a compact, highly scalable, high-performance 10GbE solution for enterprise campus distribution deployments as well as low-density data center top-of-rack environments.
Published February 2020