Most of the mid-size companies that visit our Midwest colocation facility already have a data center. It’s the one in their home office. These companies have built a data center inside the four walls to take advantage of real estate that is already leased, along with cheap, fast network access for all of the employees in the building.

Redundant generators protect against data center downtime

But do all these data center capital costs improve uptime? The answer is yes, but in many cases, not enough. Many of us mistakenly look at the last five years of actual downtime to judge whether our data center is highly reliable. This is a mistake. Your data center may not be reliable, even though you’ve been lucky for the last five years.

What does it take to keep your downtime to less that an hour per year? It takes data center with two of everything that is critical for operation: power, cooling, and communications systems. This two of everything model is also called N+N data center redundancy. Without it, companies should expect hours or days of downtime per year.

Uptime Institute uses a structured system to classify data centers. Tier IV data centers are built with N+N redundancy (two of everything) to maximize reliability. These Tier IV data centers are designed to deliver 99.995% uptime, which is 28 minutes of downtime per year or less. But building a Tier IV data center is expensive. A second power feed into a building can cost a quarter of a million dollars. CFOs routinely reject the idea a second generator because of the exorbitant capital costs. Without N+N data center redundancy, the uptime numbers just don’t add up.

What’s the answer to high uptime and manageable costs? Many companies use affordable wholesale colocation facilities. Some of these outsource data centers offer 99.995% uptime in exchange for monthly operating expenses rather than exorbitant capital costs. Many IT staffers use colocation to reduce their workload, get out of the power and cooling business, and focusing their data center management on their critical computer systems.

Colocation is not for every company. Applications, users, geography and other factors play into whether colocation or cloud computing might improve the reliability of your data center. The bottom line is the cost of downtime to your company. If you need 99.995% uptime, don’t fall prey to the illusion of data center uptime. Consider wholesale colocation to solve the uptime problem and manage data center costs.

Related Posts

• Ted Ritter – The Coming Colo Crunch

In simple terms, colocation (also known as outsourced data center or wholesale colocation) is high-tech real estate. Companies use colocation to solve the problems of hardened data center buildings, power, cooling, telecommunications and security. Companies use colocation to solve these problems without losing any control of their IT infrastructure and systems. Colocation is about control of IT without the worry of building facilities.

Cloud computing comes in many forms. Companies use cloud computing to access applications and resources without owning hardware or maintaining an IT staff . Cloud computing is about applications and solutions without the worry of IT staff, IT infrastructure, and building facilities.

When comparing cloud computing providers, make sure you understand the incremental costs. Simpler pricing models are usually better. Understand the built-in backup systems and redundancies and how you can build in higher reliability if you need to.

When shopping amongst colocation providers, make sure you understand the incremental costs. Simpler data center pricing models are usually better. Keep costs low by choosing a provider with low power costs. Midwest colocation providers tend to have lower data center power costs than other areas of the United States. Affordable colocation is available in many regions of the country. Most companies today look for a minimum 99.995% uptime carrier neutral data centers with no cross connect fees.

Use colocation to maintain control of your applications and infrastructure without the worries of building facilities. Use cloud computing when you’re looking to solve application problems with a minimum of IT overhead.

More Posts

• Will You Know Where Your Business Is If The Lights Go Out?
• Is there such a thing as affordable colocation with 99.995% uptime?
• Why are companies moving primary data centers to wholesale colocation facilities like Lifeline Data Centers? Part 9 of 9
• Arthur Cole: Is IT Really Ready for Unification?
• SOA World: Why Data Centers Need SSAE 16

Consider the what it takes for 99.995% uptime enterprise data center facilities management:

F5 tornado resistant data center building- for Midwest colocation

Full data center power redundancy – multiple power feeds, generators, UPS systems and rack feeds

Data center cooling redundancy – multiple, concurrently maintainable cooling systems

Physical security – two factor authentication and multiple layers of loggable physical security

Fire suppression – Reliable, industry standard systems with regular testing and maintenance

Data center compliance and certifications – from SAS 70 to SSAE 16, HIPAA, Sarbanes Oxley, FDA, FISMA and NIST certifications are just a few of the standards

Telecomm redundancy – Multiple telecommuncations feeds with separate entrances into the building

These requirements have nothing to do with Information Technology. They are facilities problems. If a colocation provider can take these requirements off your hands, you’re free to focus on data center management of your business, the applications that support it, and your underlying IT infrastructure.

Yes, wholesale colocation providers can simplify data center management. And if you’re selective, you can use the colocation provider to engineer higher data center uptime levels. Look for a wholesale colocation provider that delivers hardened data centers, N+N data center redundancy, multiple carriers, no cross connect fees, and 99.995% uptime. Power billing based on utilization is key. And don’t forget to shop for low data center power costs.

Wholesale colocation lets you stop worrying about data center facilities management.

More Posts

• CIO Magazine: Amazon’s Data Center Outage Reads Like a Thriller
• Arthur Cole: Is IT Really Ready for Unification?
• ITWorld: The Feds step up data center consolidation
• Rich Miller – 2010: The Year in Downtime
• CIO Magazine: IBM’s Newest Mainframe is All Linux

More of the Mashable post

More Posts

• Data Center: 10 Places You Don’t Want to Build
• Rich Miller: Cloud Computing & the ‘Roof Rack Problem’
• Colocation and data center pricing models vary: caveat emptor
• Is having a SAS 70 data center certification like a fox guarding the henhouse?
• CIO Strategy: Why the simplicity of wholesale colocation may be your best choice – Part 2

Zynga, the online game provider that recently went public, and Twitter were the two largest leasers of wholesale data center space during 2011, according to the Grub & Ellis National Data Center Practice year-end report.

Grub & Ellis is a broker of wholesale data center space, connecting tenants with builders such as CoreSite, DuPont Fabros, and Digital Realty Trust. There are several specialized brokers of such space. A wholesale data center builder produces a secure and efficient data center building, often with more than one source of power, and then a broker finds tenants to lease the space.

Wholesale space is different from hosted or managed services because the tenants put their own equipment in it and run it themselves. Grub and Ellis’ year-end summary doesn’t cover all broker’s activities, only their own, but is representative of some wholesale data center trends.

More of the InformationWeek article from Charles Babcock

More Posts

• Rich Miller: How to Prevent Downtime Due to Human Error
• Computerworld – A high-tech pioneer reflects on the digital revolution
• Chris Smith: Power issues need to remain high on business continuity managers’ to-do lists
• Mark Fontecchio: Does data center uptime affect energy efficiency?
• Jim Warner: Three major issues face telecom on cloud computing services adoption

SmarterTools recently completed its transition to a new data center in the Phoenix area. The addition of the Tier 3 data center was integral for the upcoming launch of our hosted services (such as our Hosted SmarterTrack customer service software) and will help us support increased demand for our software.

It was a logical step for our company, but not one that was taken lightly. We realize that many of our customers use our software and services for mission-critical tasks, so the security of their information and the availability of our software and services are paramount.

Choosing the best data center to house our servers and associated infrastructure wasn’t a snap decision. We researched several data center solutions, finally settling on ours after numerous on-site visits and discussions with the data center staff regarding the features and benefits of their colocation services. Based on our experience, we can offer the following tips for choosing a reliable data center:

More of the SmarterTools blog post

More Posts

• Rich Miller – Gartner: Local Focus for Colo Customers
• 99.995% uptime and affordable colocation are not mutually exclusive
• DABCC: The Virtua Data Center, Know What Not to Put in the Cloud
• CIO Magazine: IBM’s Newest Mainframe is All Linux
• SearchCIO – IT outsourcing in 2009 and beyond: Lessons learned for the new year

But it’s not the case with wholesale colocation. Colocation providers (in English: high tech landlords) deliver hardened data centers, redundant power, cooling, fire suppression, security, and access to telecom. All the complexities of 99.995% uptime are handled by experts.

You can always build your own data center. If you have mission critical facilities experts on staff, you can probably build a nice one. But can you spend the capital costs on two of everything? How does the cost compare to wholesale data center space?

Getting out of the data center facilities business can simplify your IT.

If you believe simpler is better, talk to Lifeline Data Centers for your enterprise data center and your disaster recovery colocation.

More Posts

• eWeek: Money, Virtualization Top Data Center Manager 2010 Wish List
• Jason Hiner – Get drastic: 15 IT best practices to kill
• Is a SAS 70 data center certification like a fox guarding the henhouse?
• ComputerWorld: The rise and fall (and rise) of cloud computing
• Why are companies moving primary data centers to wholesale colocation facilities? Part 2

November 29, 2011 – ROCHESTER, NY and INDIANAPOLIS

Fibertech Networks, a leading provider of broadband capacity serving the Indianapolis community since 2002, has completed a dual fiber entrance to Lifeline Data Centers’ Eastgate facility. The new, second entrance willallow Indianapolis government, health care, and financial service organizations to effectively meet industry compliance standards for network uptime and access to information.

“Redundancy in the network is easily the most important offering that this dual entrance provides,” said Alex Carroll, president for Lifeline Data Centers. ”Customers that manage mission critical applications must be aligned with the telecommunications industry compliance standard TIA-942. One of the requirements with this standard is that there must be diverse, dual paths for customers that require 99.999% uptime and the entrance that Fibertech recently installed accomplishes this.”

More of the TelecomRamblings.com post

More Posts

• Outsource data center: the hub of your mobile workforce?
• Chicago disaster recovery without Chicago colocation
• Marketing Tech Blog: Technology Fueling Economic Growth in Indiana
• Rich Miller: Sarah Palin Talks Data Center Monitoring?
• Why Midwest colocation may be your best choice

The four generator sets power the 40,000 servers in an N+1 configuration, and they provide the power to operate the cooling and other building services necessary to keep the data center alive when the power goes out. N+1 refers to a widely used practice in IT to allow for at least one extra system or a set of systems that will serve as a backup in case of failure.

It’s all on a grand scale. The rows of server racks seem to go on forever, networking equipment rooms line each side of the building. The main hallway of the building seems to stretch into infinity. In short, 1&1′s data center is one big place.

More of the CIO Insight article

More Posts

• Rich Miller: Scenes from Data Center World
• So, what is it that Lifeline Data Centers does?
• Chris Smith: Power issues need to remain high on business continuity managers’ to-do lists
• SearchDisasterRecovery: Top 10 IT disaster recovery planning tips of 2009
• Colocation and data center pricing models vary: caveat emptor

Your expertise on applications, software architecture, network, server and storage design is not expertise on building tier IV data centers with 99.995% uptime.

Likewise, experts on mission critical facilities like hardened data center buildings, data center power redundancy and cooling are rarely experts on mission critical systems and applications.

A best-of-breed CIO strategy would include expertise in both information technology systems design and highly available data center facilities. How is this done?

If your organization likes to “roll your own” enterprise data center, you probably hire design/build experts to help you accomplish your goals of high data center uptime. Although the capital costs associated with in-house data centers can be enormous, internal data centers offer the highest level of control.

If your organization is considering outsourcing the facilities disciplines, wholesale colocation offers a simple way to offload the “landlord” side of the data center without losing control of the systems.

It’s often best to outsource data center facilities when you’re great at IT but not so great at building data centers.

Midwest colocation facilities like Lifeline Data Centers offer F5 tornado resistant buildings,N+N power and cooling redundancy, and access to many telecom providers. Midwest data centers offer low power costs also give you peace of mind that you’ve done the best job at solving the data center downtime problem using an affordable colocation solution.

Are you trying to be an expert in both facilities and IT? Talk it over with the mission critical facilities experts.

More Posts

• CIO.com: Claiming PCI Or Any Other Compliance – Daily
• Coy Stine: Data Center Retrofit Strategies
• Why are companies moving primary data centers to wholesale colocation facilities like Lifeline Data Centers? Part 5
• What’s the difference between cloud computing and colocation?
• Indpls Business Journal: Lifeline Data Centers’ Eastgate redevelopment reaches crucial crossroads