Is your data in a F5 tornado resistant data center? The risk of tornado is the biggest threat for Midwest data center facilities. Whether it’s Midwest colocation or in-house data centers, how do companies protect against the threat of tornado?

The most common approach for protecting against tornadoes is to use a hardened data center, built of steel-reinforced concrete. Underground entrances for power and telecommunications are important. Absence of flood plain is important. TIA-942 compliant data centers adhere to all of the important hardening guidelines. Is your data center TI-942 compliant?

Looking for affordable colocation in hardened data center facilities with 99.995% uptime and data center certifications? Call Lifeline Data Centers in Indianapolis at 317.423.2591.

What are the cost components of your data center? How are you spending money to maintain your computing environment?

In-house data centers spend money on

• Floor space or real estate
• Power to the servers and network equipment (sometimes untracked)
• Power to the air conditioners needed to cool the server and network equipment (often untracked)
• Generators, power conditioning/UPS, HVAC systems
• Security systems
• Maintenance of the generators, HVAC and UPS ad security equipment
• FTE support for the facilities side of IT
• Bandwidth and transport: limited choices and retail pricing from telecom carriers

Companies using outsourced data centers often spend on

• Rack space in shared environments
• Power costs based on something other than usage
• Expensive private suites
• Bandwidth and transport: limited choices and retail pricing from telecom carriers

Regardless, companies often purchase inferior services:

• No hardened data center facilities, or facilities not built to withstand a regional disaster
• Limits on power per rack, cooling and space that can drive up future costs
• Significant single points of failure in the power and cooling systems
• Time and money for internal IT resources to solve facilities and physical plant problems

Lifeline Data Centers is different. Lifeline offers outsource data center facilities with:

• Data center expertise
• High data center high uptime
• A simple data center pricing model that allows you to pay as you grow
• Mulitiple carriers in a carrier neutral data center
• No cross connect fees

Call Lifeline Data Centers at 317.423.2591 to learn how you can reduce costs while improving data center uptime.

One of the most common questions financial services companies ask us is whether we have a SAS 70 data center certification. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the term, here’s the definition straight from the SAS 70 about page:

Statement on Auditing Standards (SAS) No. 70, Service Organizations, is a widely recognized auditing standard developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). A service auditor’s examination performed in accordance with SAS No. 70 (“SAS 70 Audit”) is widely recognized, because it represents that a service organization has been through an in-depth audit of their control objectives and control activities, which often include controls over information technology and related processes. In today’s global economy, service organizations or service providers must demonstrate that they have adequate controls and safeguards when they host or process data belonging to their customers. In addition, the requirements of Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 make SAS 70 audit reports even more important to the process of reporting on the effectiveness of internal control over financial reporting.
In short, SAS 70 certification means that you have control objectives, and that you adhere to them, as attested in an audit. And Sarbanes-Oxley puts a great deal of weight on the certification.

Before we had our SAS 70 certification, we had prospective clients choose an outsource data center with SAS 70 certification over our data center, even though we offered higher levels of uptime at lower prices.

The strange thing, in my opinion, is that the company seeking SAS 70 certification writes their own control objectives. Isn’t this asking the fox guarding the henhouse? If I’m clever enough to write vague, simplistic control objectives, I can obtain a SAS 70 certification without really having a well-run facility.

What do you think? Is a SAS 70 data center certification like a fox guarding the henhouse?

There’s lots of discussion about worries about security in the cloud. Chris Hoff writes today that cloud security concerns are often intermingled with compliance, which is quickly becoming a key factor in establishing comfort for enterprise users.

“The only measure that counts in the long run is how compliant you are,” he writes. “That’s what will determine the success of Cloud. Don’t believe me? Look at how the leading vendors in Cloud are responding today to their biggest (potential) customers — taking the ‘one size fits all’ model of mass-market Cloud and beginning to chop it up and create one-off’s in order to satisfy…compliance.”

more of the Data Center Knowledge article from Rich Miller

Flexibility in power, cooling, floor space eliminate barriers associated with change in the data center. Outsource data center facilities eliminate these barriers to change, along with many data center compliance and certification problems.

Hospital data centers may not be ready for the demand that more patients and digital information will create, according to a survey of hospital IT executives at small and midsize hospitals in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, China, France and Germany conducted by HIMSS Analytics on behalf of Dell.

The Healthcare Enterprise Survey showed that while many of the health care centers anticipate increased spending on IT next year, they also describe data center challenges including a lack of standards, security, extended server refresh cycles, and complexity created by a large number of servers and vendors and limited use of virtualization.

Dell officials say the lack of data center standards complicate the information sharing within and between hospitals necessary for diagnosis, decision making, and coordination and management of patient care. With refresh cycles of five years or more, small and midsize hospitals rely on servers that are less efficient and cost more to run and manage as they prepare for a significant increase in data over the next two years

more of the eWeek article from Roy Mark

This one even trumps concerns about security, compliance, privacy, and management.

At several events in which I’ve been involved with more than 40 CIOs over the past few months, the most-talked about subject was cloud computing and the second-place topic was miles behind. Vendors of every stripe—from IBM and HP to Microsoft and Oracle to Riverbed and Informatica to Wipro and Capgemini and many many more—have developed full-blown strategies for building out cloud infrastructures, services, platforms, strategies, integration, and products.

CIOs are eager—extremely eager—to see if the potential of the cloud can be transformed into tangible business value that will help them deal with three extremely pressing issues:

more of the Information Week article from Bob Evans

The FBI on Tuesday defended its raids on at least two data centers in Texas, in which agents carted out equipment and disrupted service to hundreds of businesses.

The raids were part of an investigation prompted by complaints from AT&T and Verizon about unpaid bills allegedly owed by some data center customers, according to court records. One data center owner charges that the telecoms are using the FBI to collect debts that should be resolved in civil court. But on Tuesday, an FBI spokesman disputed that charge.

“We wouldn’t be looking at it if it was a civil matter,” says Mark White, spokesman for the FBI’s Dallas office. “And a judge wouldn’t sign a federal search warrant if there wasn’t probable cause to believe that a fraud took place and that the equipment we asked to seize had evidence pertaining to the criminal violation.”

In interviews with Threat Level, companies affected by the raids say they’ve lost millions of dollars in equipment and business after the FBI hauled off gear belonging to phone and VoIP providers, a credit card processing company and other businesses that housed equipment at the centers. Nobody has been charged in the FBI’s investigation.

According to the owner of one co-location facility, Crydon Technology, which was raided on March 12, FBI agents seized about 220 servers belonging to him and his customers, as well as routers, switches, cabinets for storing servers and even power strips. Authorities also raided his home, where they seized eight iPods, some belonging to his three children, five XBoxes, a PlayStation3 system and a Wii gaming console, among other equipment. Agents also seized about $200,000 from the owner’s business accounts, $1,000 from his teenage daughter’s account and more than $10,000 in a personal bank account belonging to the elderly mother of his former comptroller.

more of the Wired article

Outsource data centers (colocation facilities) are becoming the new hub of the mobile workforce. 

The move away from the traditional in-house data center towards colocation may be a smart move for your company.  Here are some key factors:

• Are most of your company employees becoming mobile workers?
• Is 99.995% uptime your new minimum SLA?
• Can you afford to build?  Building a data center to a 99.995% uptime standard is extremely expensive and capital intensive.  It means building more data center redundancy in power feeds, generators, UPS and cooling.  You’ll also need to use weather and natural disaster proof building methods depending on your region. 
• Is it better to rent?  Affordable colocation in some markets allows you to drive cost out of the model by moving your data center off-site.
• Do you need to be compliant?  You can leverage your outsource colocation compliance record as part of your overall compliance strategy.
• Is power expensive?  Outsource data center power costs can be less expensive than in-house power costs if you expand your search to the Midwest.
• Do you need options for connectivity?  More choices on Internet and WAN circuits are often available in carrier neutral colocation facilities.

Can outsource data center facilities help you provide better service to your mobile workforce and your reduce costs at the same time?  Ask Lifeline.