Given all the time, investment and energy (literally) that enterprise organizations have been making in their data center facilities, you’d think that the availability of such facilities is a non-issue. You’d be wrong.

Nemertes Research predicts a shortage of colocation space in the U.S. beginning this year, growing to a $1.9 billion facilities gap by 2015.

How did we arrive at these conclusions? We looked at the data center market by independently assessing both supply (the current and predicted availability of commercial data center colocation facilities) and demand (the user need for such facilities). And we found that while supply is growing, demand is growing faster. This supply-demand imbalance creates what we’re calling “the colo crunch”.

Supply is Growing…

To assess supply, Nemertes relied on traditional primary and secondary market research techniques to determine the current market size and extrapolate growth rates. We arrived at an overall 2012 domestic market of roughly $18.5 billion in commercial data-center colocation facilities, growing to $31.2 billion in 2015.

More of the Data Center Knowledge article from Ted Ritter

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• The illusion of data center uptime

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.

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• 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.

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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.

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Most companies who need new high uptime data center space compare the costs of building their own primary data center in a company building versus using wholesale colocation facilities, aka outsource data centers.

So what does high uptime mean? Uptime is the measured value in minutes of a company’s computer systems reliability. 99.995% uptime means 28 minutes of downtime per year or less. Companies who value uptime know that downtime causes lost sales, lost profits, and lost clients. These companies haveoften learned about the costs of data center downtime the hard way. Some unlikely circumstance caused an outage that was painful enough for leadership to reevaluate the importance of the server room to the success of the company.

But the cost of uptime is high. A small in-house data center with 99.995% uptime can easily reach $1 million in capital costs, and tens of thousands in staffing, yearly maintenance, SAS 70 and SSAE 16 data center certifications.

What does affordable mean? Here are three characteristics:

Simple data center pricing model – Can you understand how the pricing works? Are there multiple add-on charges and mysterious extra monthly fees?

Predictable – Predictable pricing models make it easy to forecast growth and change. How complex is a three year analysis of your costs? Are there multiple variable costs?

Incremental- Incremental means pay as you use it. Can you grow the number of racks and pay accordingly? Do you pay for electricity as you use it, or based on the circuit size?

The good news: you can have your cake and eat it too. You can meet tier IV data center uptime requirements and still keep data center outsource costs low. The bad news: there are only a few Midwest colocation facilities that offer high data center uptime at affordable pricing. Do your homework and you’ll find flexible affordable colocation with high data center uptime.

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In Part 1, I talked about the most important applications in your business, also know as your mission critical applications. I covered reasons that many of these mission critical applications are ill-behaved and require special care and feeding in your enterprise data center. These reasons include high bandwidth requirements on the headquarters or wide area network, expensive overbuilt servers, and additional hours of maintenance overhead per month.

How do these worst-behaved applications affect your data center requirements?

Bandwidth – Many applications generate large amounts of network traffic for even the smallest user activity. These levels of traffic can cause the applications to perform poorly via the Internet or small remote office connections. These apps can influence your decision on the location of the primary data center. It often seems simplest to place the data center close (in the same building) to your highest number of users. Yet an in-house data center may not fully support your data center uptime requirements.

Interoperability – If your most important applications link up to other important applications, you may be forced to put these applications in the same data center. If your manufacturing system is feeding data to your customer management system and your accounting system, reliability becomes more important, because a small amount downtime can affect three important software systems, not just one.

Souped-up, expensive servers – Experience has taught your IT staff to overbuild server and storage hardware to solve some of the bad behaviors of your mission critical applications. These non-standard configurations can drive up costs. Non-standard configurations are also more difficult to operate in cloud computing environments, forcing the data center to remain physical, instead of virtual.

More Maintenance – More problems mean more maintenance work to solve them. This drives up FTE requirements and makes outsourcing more complex and expensive. Maintenance load can influence location and staff requirements for the data center.

Costly uptime – Problem applications are harder to keep running and often require more technology for high uptime levels. Expensive high uptime technologies like clustering greatly drive up the costs of keeping the application alive and well.

Ill-behaved line-of-business applications influence strategic data center decisions:

Primary data center location – Would your data center be better off in-house, in the cloud, in an outsourced data center facility or a hybrid of all three?

Wide area network design – Where is the hub of the network? How many telecom providers should I use? How much bandwidth do I buy? How can I get the best pricing?

Server hardware ownership and maintenance – Do I buy my own servers for maximum control? Do I use virtual servers in the cloud? Do I use a combination of both?

Maintenance – Does in-house staff do maintenance or do I outsource it?

Good CIO strategy includes a clear understanding of the mission critical applications and their data center requirements.

More CIOs are using these tools to mitigate the risks of their worst-behaved applications:

• Thin application delivery via software by VMware and Citrix to solve bandwidth problems
• Affordable colocation to build in 99.995% uptime on the data center power and cooling
• Cloud computing services like virtual private servers for predictable mission critical applications
• Change management discipline to manage application behaviors and reduce maintenance

Don’t let your worst-behaved applications cause you to make bad decisions about your data center.

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Lifeline Data Centers owns and operates a secure outsourced data center complex on the grounds of a former shopping mall, the city’s first, built in 1958. Over 450,000 square feet are converted into secure office and related facilities. Lifeline co-owner Rich Banta said “The Emergency Operations Center lease marks the beginning of the second phase in Lifeline’s long-term strategy; retooling the remainder of the mall into a data center campus that includes large scale office space.”

The Indianapolis DPS selected Lifeline’s Eastgate complex for:
•Close proximity to three interstate highways, with ample parking
•Secure office space with high-uptime data center facilities and multiple telecom providers on a single campus
•Lifeline’s reputation and experience in building and maintaining mission critical data centers

Lifeline Data Centers purchased the 41 acre Eastgate retail shopping mall in 2008 and opened the first data center building in 2009. Currently, Lifeline operates 30,000 square feet of production data center floor space at the Eastgate campus. An additional 30,000 feet is available in the existing data center with ample space for new data center building construction.

The Department of Public Safety (DPS) protects the 850,000 citizens of Indianapolis. The DPS Regional Operations Center is part of an $18 million City of Indianapolis project to consolidate control and response into a single command center. This approach has been successful in Los Angeles, Chicago, Memphis, and other cities. With the US Department of Homeland Security regional office also housed in the same space, the operations center will extend reach to protect most of central Indiana.

Lifeline Data Centers is a “high tech landlord” that provides wholesale colocation (outsourced data center buildings) to companies that require highly reliable computer rooms. Lifeline’s clients include Fortune 1000 companies, health care networks, software companies, universities, city, and state governments.

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I’m interested in hearing how organizations have come to the conclusion that this was their best alternative to expanding data center capacity?

We have seen some organizations dive into Co-Lo facilities because the industry is growing so they assume it is the right thing to do or they think it will be more cost effective before anyone has really analyzed the cost implications. I think it is critical for an organization to analyze all of the suitable approaches to their need of expanding data center capacity such as; upgrading existing facilities, Co-Location, building new or building a scalable Data Center Shelter that can be leased to provide tax benefits while the lease payments may be close to what you’d pay for suitable Co-Lo space.

First of all, what is driving your interest in Co-Location is it the costs of running your own facility? Or one of these issues:

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If your organization

• operates a private cloud
• delivers cloud services
• uses a combination of cloud and internal services

you may want to consider a wholesale data center as the center or hub of your cloud infrastructure.

Outsource data centers can deliver 99.995% uptime. That’s 28 minutes of data center downtime per year or less. You can leverage the data center power and cooling redundancy in an F5 tornado resistant data center without having to spend the capital costs to build your own.

You can maintain the control of your own servers, network and storage without worrying about hardened data center buildings, power, cooling, data center security, and fire suppression.

You can build a primary, secondary, or high-availability computer room that meets SAS 70 data center requirements along with other data center certifications and compliance, without having to use internal resources for compliance.

You can choose which telecommunications providers best suit your needs, in order to build a reliable, cost-effective wide area network.

You can leverage data center power costs by choosing Midwest colocation facilities with lower kilowatt hour costs .

Which wholesale data center is the right place to build your cloud computing data center? Consider these criteria:

• Is the outsource data center provider growing? Look for large, successful data center facilities with room to grow.
• Who owns the data center? Are the owners involved in the day-to-day operations?
• What’s the track record of the business? How long have they been building and operating data centers?
• What level of data center uptime is the provider offering? 99.995% uptime is the promised service level of a tier IV data center.
• Does the provider offer shared space, private cages or private suites? Can you bring your own cabinets? Do they offer optional office space? More options are better.
• What are your choices for telecommunications? If you need flexibility, you need a carrier neutral data center that offers access to many carriers. Look for facilities with no cross connect fees to keep monthly costs low.
• Look for a usage-based power pricing model with low per kilowatt hour pricing. Midwest data centers often have the best power pricing because of lower power costs in the region.
• Look for affordable colocation facilities can deliver 99.995% with a pay as you grow data center pricing model.

If you’d like to build more reliability and predictable costs into your data center, call Lifeline Data Centers at 317.423.2591.

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Many companies are faced with changes to their computer rooms. Whether they are moving the computer room or trying to expand the space, power and cooling, the choice boils down to spending money on an internal data center or considering outsource data center space, also know as colocation or outsource computer room facilities.

Many factors play into a decision to move a data center off-site. A company’s mission-critical applications must behave well in an off-site data center. The cost of data center downtime affects the decision. Power costs can have great impact. Data center certification and compliance requirements are a factor.

Yet in many businesses, the cost of the data center’s electrical power is rarely assigned to the IT department. Decision makers in the finance and IT departments should consider this hidden cost when evaluating new projects.

For a small business in Indianapolis with:

• one rack of server equipment
• 2 UPS systems
• router
• firewall
• 2 switches
• 30 workstations
• 10 printers

electrical usage is roughly 9 KW/hr. Cooling is another 18 KW/hr for a total of $1167 per month. Approximately $525 per month is for the servers and communications equipment.

Compare this pricing to an outsource data center: $850 per rack per month plus the cost of a telecommunications circuit. Affordable colocation is a reality. By using an outsourcer’s hardened data center, your are protecting your systems from critical downtime. If the provider offers tier IV data center facilities, you’ll also be improving uptime via redundant power and cooling systems.

The idea of using a Midwest colocation provider may be the right choice for your business. Outsource data center facilities offer the advantage of large data center facilities at affordable prices for small business.

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