For Affordablehost Custom Dedicated Infrastructure and Colocation Servers

This document outlines the Disaster Recovery (DR) and Business Continuity framework for Affordablehost’s Custom Dedicated Infrastructure and Colocation Servers. It is designed to provide transparency to our clients regarding the resilience of our physical environment, while clearly defining the shared responsibility model for data protection and application recovery.

A Custom Dedicated Server is a good choice when your workloads require consistent performance, dedicated hardware resources or control over infrastructure stack. Unlike shared or cloud-based environments, dedicated servers provide predictable resource allocation and allow you to configure the server environment to meet your requirements.

2. Our Infrastructure Resilience (What We Provide)

Affordablehost is committed to providing a highly secure, reliable, and resilient physical environment for your mission-critical servers. The following measures are in place at our data centre facility:

2.1 Physical Location & Security

• Location: Our Data Centre Park is strategically located between Johannesburg and Pretoria. It is not in a direct flight path or low-lying area, and a geotechnical audit has been completed to ensure ground stability.

• Perimeter Security: A high-voltage barrier-backed perimeter fence, supported by the latest video surveillance technology and response systems.

• Access Control: Biometric access control systems with progressive access policies restrict entry to authorised personnel only.

• 24/7 Monitoring: All access zones, both inside and outside the data centre, are monitored by video surveillance. On-site security personnel are present 24×7.

2.2 Power Outage Protection

• Dual Power Feeds: The facility is powered by an 11kV supply from the municipal utility, energising a fault-tolerant, medium-voltage ring. This powers two separate low-voltage 2MVA energy centres (“A” and “B” feeds) that serve mission-critical infrastructure.

• Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS): Our UPS systems provide always-on power with a battery standby time of 30 minutes, ensuring seamless failover.

• Generator Backup: We maintain on-site fuel storage sufficient to run our generators for 3 days continuously.

• Performance Record: Since inception, the data centre has maintained 100% power availability. During upstream power failures or load-shedding events, the facility has run on generator power for over 93 hours without any power loss to customer equipment.

2.3 Connectivity

• Multi-Homed Network: Our network is multi-homed with multiple uplinks via at least two Tier 1 upstream providers and peering partners. In the event of a network failure, traffic is automatically rerouted via alternate uplinks.

• Redundant Fibre: Connectivity is provided through diverse, redundant fibre routes connecting the facility to a 10Gbps fibre ring.

2.4 Fire Prevention & Climate Control

• Fire Detection: A Very Early Smoke Detection Apparatus (VESDA) is installed to trigger alarms at the slightest hint of smoke particles. All cabling is fire-retardant, and there are no flammable materials present in the data centre “white space”.

• Climate Control: We operate a bespoke air conditioning system with N+2 redundancy and a total sensible cooling capacity of 1400kW. The environment is controlled according to ASHRAE standards.

• Efficiency: Our system leverages free cooling and cold aisle containment, achieving an average Power Utilisation Efficiency (PUE) of 1.19 (significantly below the industry average).

3. Shared Responsibility Model

It is critical to understand the distinction between infrastructure reliability and data recovery.

Your server is equipped with Software RAID, which could provides real-time disk mirroring if configured accordingly. This protects against a single hard drive failure but does not protect against:

• Accidental data deletion.

• Software corruption or ransomware attacks.

• Complete server failure.

• Regional disasters affecting the data centre.

4. Building Your Disaster Recovery Plan (Your Responsibility)

To ensure business continuity, every client is expected to build and maintain a comprehensive Disaster Recovery Plan. This plan should, at a minimum, include the following components:

4.1 Define Your RTO & RPO

• RTO (Recovery Time Objective): The maximum acceptable amount of downtime for your application (e.g., 4 hours).

• RPO (Recovery Point Objective): The maximum acceptable amount of data loss measured in time (e.g., 1 hour of data loss is acceptable).

4.2 Document Your Technical Runbook

A clear, step-by-step guide that multiple team members can execute under stress. This should include:

• An inventory of all critical assets (databases, configuration files, applications).

• Step-by-step procedures for restoring from backups.

• Emergency contact lists and escalation workflows.

4.3 Implement a Robust Backup Strategy

We strongly recommend following the 3-2-1 Backup Rule:

• 3 copies of your data (1 production + 2 backups).

• 2 different media types (e.g., local storage + external/cloud storage).

• 1 copy stored off-site (geographically separate from the production server).

To achieve this, we recommend:

1. Local Backup (RAID 1): Your server’s RAID 1 configuration protects against a single drive failure.

2. Nearline Backup: A secondary storage location within the same data centre for faster restores. For your server configuration, consider a dedicated backup server with at least 3x the storage capacity of your production server for full system snapshots.

3. Off-site Backup: A geographically separate location (e.g., a different cloud provider or a secondary data centre) to protect against site-wide disasters.

4.4 Testing & Compliance

• Regular Testing: Conduct at least two (2) formal DR tests per year to validate your restore procedures and update your runbook accordingly. AGSA and other auditors require documented evidence of testing.

• POPIA Compliance: A disaster recovery plan is not optional under the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA). You must demonstrate that you have taken “reasonably practicable steps” to protect the integrity and availability of personal information.

5. Affordablehost Service Recommendations

To assist you in building a robust DR strategy, Affordablehost offers the following services:

• Dedicated Backup Server: We can provision a separate dedicated server with high-capacity storage specifically for backup storage and system snapshots.

• Hardware Upgrades: Increase your server’s resilience with additional storage drives or a hardware RAID controller.

• Consultation: Our team is available to provide guidance on implementing backup solutions within our environment.

Affordablehost provides the secure, reliable, and resilient foundation for your custom dedicated and colocation server operations. However, a true Disaster Recovery plan extends beyond the data centre.

We are committed to assisting you with the infrastructure components you need to build a compliant and effective DR strategy.

For more information on our services and how we can support your business continuity needs, please visit our website at https://www.affordablehost.co.za or contact our support team at support@affordablehost.co.za.