We are making great progress on our data center here in Eden Prairie. The raised floor is nearly finished, the ceiling is complete, and the generators will be installed before we know it. Earlier this week, a 90-ton crane hoisted three 30-ton cooling units onto the roof. You can see all of this and more in the video below. Enjoy!

This time lapse video shows the progress made on VISI’s new Eden Prairie data center from September 16th to November 6th. In this video you’ll see the ceiling reinforcements, installation of sheetrock, painting of the walls, sealing the floor and preparations for installing the three foot raised floor.

You can follow the progress on Twitter and Facebook.

It started with an idea: reliable, elastic and inexpensive storage. The question was what is the best way to provide it? After what seemed like years of evaluating different options we decided to use ParaScale as the basis of our cloud storage infrastructure. From an engineers’ perspective playing with new technologies can be fun, but designing and building something useful is a lot more interesting. It seems like we just finished selecting ParaScale, and yet we are already a few days into beta!

Cloud Storage sounds cool, but what can you really use it for? Some of the ways I’m already using it:
• Backups. I am now backing up my laptop up to the cloud.
• Sharing. I can quickly, easily and securely share documents and other files with coworkers, family and friends.
• Freeing up space. I have moved rarely used but important files to the cloud. Old photos, archived email, music that is no longer finding its way into my playlists, etc.

Those are just the ways I’m using it personally. As a business user and hosting engineer I’m even more excited about the possible use cases. I’m constantly in need of more storage for backups, snapshots, disc images, logs, etc. I’m often in need of a secure, central place to store files that I can access from anywhere. What makes VISI Cloud Storage especially nice for me in these use cases is that it is in the same data center as the servers I’m working with! Not having to go out over the Internet makes my transfers faster and more secure.

I’m excited about the possibilities for this product. You can discover more for yourself by becoming a beta tester.

I would like to thank everyone for attending our cloud webinar this afternoon.  Johnny and I were really excited to talk about the new ReliaCloud platform and provide a live demo.  Many of the questions we received during the webinar were insightful and we promise to incorporate your feedback into our product.  You can download a PDF file containing the slides from the presentation today. 

Tomorrow marks VISI’s 15th anniversary. It is fitting that VISI was founded on Halloween Day — day in and day out, the people of VISI demonstrate a youthful energy and enthusiasm. This liveliness abounds in the office on Halloween with our annual costume contest and chili cook-off. With Halloween comes comradery, and VISI has always been about the people.

The people of VISI are what make VISI special. It always has been this way and always will be. Just like any trick-or-treat bag is full of a wonderful assortment of candy, the people of VISI bring a variety of flavor to the office. It takes all sorts of personalities and skill sets to make a successful company. I am very proud of everyone who works at VISI or has contributed in the last 15 years. They are truly what makes VISI a special and wonderful place to work.

Thank you everyone and have a Happy Halloween!

P.S. To help you get to know our staff, marketing has put together a special 15th anniversary video. Check it out below!