|
contents | business | |||||||
| Betfair Selects ControlCircle ControlCircle has been selected by Betfair to provide datacentre space and collocation services as the hugely successful sports exchange commences virtualisation trials. With more than a million registered customers today, 433,000 of them active (up 57% on the year before), Betfair handles more than 300 bets a second and 5 million transactions per day – more than all the European stock markets combined. It has taken around 1,000 man years to build the Java-written bespoke exchange and an investment of some $150 million. Using server virtualisation software, Betfair's goal is to rapidly provision new virtual machines and allocate capacity to support specific events for example, or allow applications and services to be easily moved as required between its datacentres located around the world. To facilitate this Betfair selected ControlCircle to provide datacentre space and associated services so that a trial environment could be set up to test systems and applications using a virtual model, without impacting operational infrastructure. ControlCircle was chosen as Betfair's datacentre partner in March 2008 given its reputation and work with Tradefair, the new financial betting exchange launched by the Betfair Group in June 2008. Initially ControlCircle is providing Betfair seven racks for this test environment (four for networking technology and three for servers), cabling and installation services, and connectivity to other Betfair infrastructure also located within Global Switch London II but on a different floor. Having implemented production systems abroad Betfair is now virtualising various API test systems, used by third parties who write and develop software which link into its sports exchange. This allows companies or individuals to review how changes, additional functionality or new software will behave in a live context. From an IT operational perspective, virtualisation will make moving services between Betfair's datacentres much easier – as virtual machines can be copied quickly and bought up in different locations – especially as Betfair is creating a standardised model for hardware in its datacentres encompassing common network, server and security designs. Similarly, Betfair will virtualise systems currently used for disaster recovery purposes thereby avoiding IT sitting around doing nothing on the off chance there is a failure. write your comments about the article :: © 2008 Computing News :: home page |