At AOK Internet, we take our corporate and social responsibly seriously. We aim to run our operation in a sympathetic manner to the environment and ensure we make as little impact as possible. We are constantly looking at ways we can continually improve our processes and cost-effectiveness. We aim to minimise our energy consumption, re-use as much as we can and if we can't reuse, recycle. We use our own designed and built energy efficient general office computers that use as little as 15 Watts of power (system unit only). If there is enough interest we may setup a division that could sell versions of these computers in the future - if you are interested in this send us an email, we would be interested in your opinion and requirements.

We aim to assure our vision of a business model fit for the future, so being as sustainable as we can while impacting on our planets resources as little as possible, we plan to provide managed business growth but achieve this with a duty of care to the environment and social community in which we live.

AOK Internet's state of the art data-centre provides our customers with the speed, reliability and uptime they require. With the latest server technology and several backbone connections, AOK Internet ensures that your site will be available as close to 100% as possible.

The AOK Internet data-centre offers a secure, resilient environment for our web hosting platform. Based in a secure facility the data centre is built to an N+1 specification, so that if any particular service fails - e.g. electricity or air conditioning - another backup service automatically takes over the failed service's job.

Dual power feeds enter the building at different points and Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS) ensure that all power to the server area is clean and spike free. In the event of a power outage the UPS can take the entire data centre load for up to five minutes. However within 20 seconds our redundant generators are able to indefinitely take on the entire data centre load.

Access to our data centre is via a master access list using Smart Card authentication. Access to the data centre is by authorisation only.

CCTV operates throughout the facility.

Our fire detection system monitors the room for any sign of fire and allows operators to respond to such a situation using a   variety of fire suppression techniques.

We use Dell servers in our web hosting platform. Utilising state-of-the-art technology we have built a web hosting platform that is second to none. We also use our own designed and built servers for non-web activities such as database or back-end services. We always ensure that we use the most energy efficient computer and networks that we can. This saves unnecessary energy waste, helps the environment and saves us money, which we then pass on to our customers in feature rich cost effective packages.

Our platform is designed in such a way that if any server fails another server automatically, and without delay, takes over that server's workload. For example, if one of our mail servers breaks down another server automatically comes online, with all the correct configuration, and takes over the work of the failed server. During the time this changeover occurs, no email or data is lost.

As well as this, all data is stored on two large network disk arrays. Data is automatically synchronised between the arrays so that in the event of an array failing the remaining array continues to serve data to the servers with no downtime.

• Dual Quad Core Intel® Xeon® 3.16GHz with 2X6MB Cache
• 8 GB RAM
• Dual 136 GB SCSI Drive (for the operating system)
• RAID Mirroring (for the operating system)
• Dual Power Supplies
• Dual Gigabit Network Adapters

Heart Internet's network operates on industry-leading network equipment from Cisco Systems. All our switches and routers are developed by Cisco. Our network is based on gigabit technology, which means that it runs at a speed of 1000 Mb per second - most web hosting networks are limited to 100 Mb per second.

Red Hat is the leading provider of Linux open source software. For many years now Redhat Linux has been the number one choice for web hosting companies, not just because of Red Hat's amazing scalability but also because of its track record as the most stable operating system available in the market today.

Our systems utilise the latest Red Hat server technology to allow our servers to be continually up to date with Red Hat system & security patches.

Unlike many of our competitors we run Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the most stable release of Red Hat Linux available and the only version that keeps completely up to date with security patches.

We also use Ubuntu for some systems, a very flexible Linux derivative based on the Debian distribution and has many advanced features.

AOK Internet operates a multi-homed network utilising BGP4 technology. In simple terms this means that we have multiple connections to the Internet with different backbone providers, should any connection fail our other connections automatically take all the traffic. Not only does this mean that we are very unlikely to lose connectivity to the Internet, but it also means that traffic moving to and from our network can choose from a range of paths to get to its final destination. This means that we have been able to configure the network always to take the fastest paths.