What is your company doing to balance high data center uptime with manageable facilities costs? If you’re like many medium to large organizations, you’re considering wholesale colocation facilities as an alternative to traditional outsource data centers.

Although opinions on the definition of wholesale colocation facilities vary, they share common characteristics:

Reundant data center power
Data center cooling redundancy
Hardened data center buildings
Fire suppression
Security
A real estate approach to data center space

Many IT organizations benefit by solving the facilities problem separately from their IT issues. They have the expertise in-house to manage IT. But they’d rather outsource the data center facilities problems to experts. Data center compliance and certification issue can also be handled by the outsource computer room facility. This is another area that IT organizations are often happy to outsource.

Lifeline Data Centers, a Midwest colocation facility, offers additional features in its wholesale data center facilities:

Simple pricing model
Pay-as-you grow pricing
Power billed on usage
Carrier neutral data center facilities
No cross-connect fees Private cages or private suites
99.995% data center uptime

Does affordable wholesale colocation sound like it might suit your data center needs? Give Lifeline Data Centers a call at 317.5423.2591.

Colocation power costs (the cost of power in an outsource data center facility) can make a big difference in your overall IT budget. The raw cost of power varies throughout the country. Midwest colocation provider Lifeline Data Centers pays Indianapolis Power and Light $.055 per kW/hr. East and west coast colocation facilities pay double that cost of power.

But more importantly, how does the outsource data center pricing model charge you for power? The fairest way would be to charge based on actual usage. At Lifeline, we charge $.175 per kW/hr based on actual power draw. $.055 is for power to the IT equipment, $.055 is for associated data center cooling for the IT equipment, and $.065 is overhead associated with running multiple utility feeds, multiple generators, and multiple UPS systems for each and every client.

Colocation pricing models vary; be careful.

If you’re considering outsource data center facilities, you know that data center uptime and data center certifications are important. But the cost of data center power can affect the long-term IT budget. Choose an outsource colocation facility that charges fairly with low power costs. Choose Lifeline Data Centers.

I have been working with an old friend for many months, investigating his alternatives in moving out of his existing outsourced computer room facility and into Lifeline Data Centers. His existing outsource computer room facility was chosen by a predecessor. The existing provider has a number of features that are problematic for my old friend:

Not a carrier neutral data center – The existing provider sells company circuits over all others. There is a premium for the clients to buy circuits directly from the carriers, and there are only three choices other than the providers circuits.

Colocation-owned point-to-point circuits – The client has been expanding and has purchased point-to-point circuits from the colocation provider. This has essentially locked him into the colo provider because it would be so expensive to exit these contracts, which all have differing termination dates.

Cross-connect fees – The client pays monthly add-on fees for the circuits that are directly with the carrier. With eight circuits, these add up to about $600 per month.

No data center power redundancy – The colocation provider has a single power feed from the public utility. Even though they advertise multiple UPS and PDUs (this cracks me up), the reality is that they have experienced multiple outages because of the lack of data center redundancy. My friend needs 99.995% uptime. But my friend has no sensible way to get out of his contracts without paying exorbitant termination fees.

No hardened data center facilities – The provider has concrete walls and a steel decked roof. A tornado would suck the roof right off the building. Does that make sense?

So what’s the point? Be careful when you select an outsource data center provider. Don’t let your vendor gain a choke hold on you and your business. What should you be looking for?

• Carrier neutral data centers
• No cross connect fees
• Data center power redundancy
• Fair, simple data center pricing model
• Hardened data center facilities

Looking for a better alternative? Call Lifeline Data Centers at 317.423.2591.

Is outsource data center space a better alternative than infrastructure as a service? Many of Lifeline Data Centers newer clients are second generation outsource data center users. They are moving out of the cloud, or out of another data center and into Lifeline. Their reasons for moving fall into a few categories:

Infrastructure as a service was a good solution at startup, but became too expensive to use as the client grew and needed more resources.

The cost of downtime is high and the clients have experienced data center downtime with their current outsource data center or cloud computing provider.

Data center certifications and data center compliance were difficult or impossible to evaluate/audit in a cloud-based environment.

Clients experienced performance issues that were difficult or impossible to isolate in a fully-hosted, cloud- based environment.

Clients do the math and determine that leasing/buying hardware and placing it in a facility with a sensible data center pricing model is a less expensive alternative.

Clients have had some costly downtime pain and want to take back control of their environments to guarantee that they have hardware, software and data center redundancy where it counts.

Clients realize that what they really need is a hybrid model that includes both outsource data center space and infrastructure as a service/software as a service.

Why are they choosing Lifeline Data Centers over other providers for their outsource computer room space?

Flexibility – clients can buy shared space or private cages, and can purchase extra space for growth without paying a penalty.

Uptime – Lifeline provides 99.995% uptime, the same levels as Uptime Institute certified tier IV data center facilities. And Lifeline’s hardened data centers are F5 tornado resistant.

Data center pricing model – Lifeline has a simple pricing model that separates floor space, per rack charges and power utilization. This appeals to clients who need incremental growth and easy forecasting of future costs.

Carrier neutral data center with no cross connect fees – Lifeline offers access to 15 carriers with no monthly cross-connect fees. Many clients find that the cross-connect fee savings can pay for their outsource data center space.

Data center power costs – Lifeline’s two Midwest colocation facilities deliver low power costs and pay-as you-use-it pricing.

Is outsource data center space a better alternative than infrastructure as a service? It depends, of course, on the nature of your business needs. For affordable colocation, call Lifeline Data Centers at 317.423.2591 to learn more about your best alternatives for outsource data center and cloud computing data center options to take advantage of the best of both worlds.

For many companies, computer systems reliability is important. Downtime can mean lost credibility, lost revenues, or worse, lost clients. Downtime is usually expensive when companies depend on computers for Internet sales, customer service, delivery of services, and manufacturing. Many companies calculate and assign costs to their computer system downtime. I recently talked to a manufacturing company who puts the cost of downtime at $360,000 per hour.

How does a company build reliability into their mission critical computer systems? One of the easiest ways is to improve the data center (computer room) facilities. Power and cooling problems are huge threats to computer system reliability.

How does a company improve data center facilities? The company can build their own, or use outsource data center facilities like Lifeline Data Centers. There are a few features to look for in outsource data centers in order to get the maximum uptime for the money:

• 99.995% uptime – 27 minutes of downtime per year or less
• Hardened data centers – buildings sturdy enough to withstand tornadoes and other disasters
• Affordable colocation – find a company with a sensible data center pricing model
• Data center power redundancy – multiple utility power feeds (ask!), multiple generators, multiple UPS and HVAC systems
• Carrier neutral data center – Mulitiple telecom carriers available for options on your best price/value combination
• No cross-connect fees – no monthly add-on fees for the right to connect to other telecom carriers
• Data center certifications and compliance – the more certifications and compliance points, the lower the risk of future problems

Lifeline offers 99.995% uptime data center facilities. That’s a promise of 27 minutes of downtime per year or less. Lifeline’s affordable colocation facilities make it easy for companies to improve their computer systems reliability by minimizing data center downtime.

Does your company need more reliability? Contact Lifeline 317.423.2591.

One of our new data center customers is a cloud service provider. Correction: most of Lifeline Data Centers’ new customers are cloud services providers. But this particular customer took advantage of a specific approach to cost savings, resulting in tens of thousands of dollars per year. I’ll refer to this approach, this space between, as Lifeline.

This customer is a cloud services company. Back at start up a few years ago, the company leveraged another cloud provider for the IT infrastructure: server, network and security equipment. This let the company start up fast and provide for future scalability.

But there was a problem. The company became successful. They were acquiring new clients, generating new revenue and scaling their application. But the costs of scaling were too high. The cloud infrastructure pricing model meant that more sales growth would result in lower and lower margins.

So they took a step back and re-evaluated the infrastructure. It wasn’t that complex; it boiled down to VMware, a few servers, a SAN, switches, security appliances and a recovery model. With a few hours of design time, they came up with a modular approach, designed to scale one rack of equipment at a time. The design was a low-cost, over-engineered solution that was resilient enough to take multiple failures and not miss a beat. What they really needed was a flexible, affordable colocation facility to house these racks.

Here is the list of outsource data center requirements they developed:

High uptime: 99.995%: equal to tier IV data center uptime standards of 27 minutes of downtime per year or less

Hardened data center facilities operated by experts who build to the highest data center certifications and resiliency standards

Access to multiple carriers without monthly cross connect fees: Multiple carriers allowed them to negotiate more flexible contracts with multiple carriers. Multiple carriers allows them to control their uptime and service levels. No monthly cross connect fees means lower monthly costs and no upper limit on carrier diversity.

Data center pricing model that is incremental, or pay as you grow

Midwest data center for low, predictable costs of power

The company chose Lifeline Data Centers because Lifeline was flexible and had all of these features. The cloud services company found better profitability by replacing a cloud infrastructure with their own infrastructure at Lifeline. This “space between” cloud computing and the data center may hold lower costs, better service levels or higher profitability for your organization, too.

If your data center is in-house, you may want to consider outsource data center as well. Infrastructure and cloud computing PDF whitepapers don’t talk enough about flexibility when it comes to a company’s physical data center facilities. Check out our whitepaper on outsourcing a data center.

If you’re a cloud service provider, or an IT professional looking to improve uptime ad reduce data center costs, call 317.423.2591 to find out how you benefit from this “space between.”

Building a data center cost model is an important step in managing your data center capital costs and ongoing operational costs.

• A data center cost model lets you understand how incremental growth impacts costs.
• A data center cost model allows you to predict future scenarios.
• A good data center cost model helps you build a pricing model for cloud services or chargeback.

Many companies that build a data center cost model find that the cost of incremental growth is full of spikes. A new project with a few servers may cost the company $100,000 in new generators, UPS equipment, and air conditioning systems. The next few projects might have little or no direct data center capital costs.

Companies who develop cost models also may discover that they are likely to “hit a ceiling.” Often there are upper limits on power, cooling or floor space in an enterprise data center due to the location, the property owner, or the building configuration.

Affordable colocation providers with sensible data center pricing models can help companies solve these problems. Outsource data center facilities provide an incremental operating cost model rather than a spiky capital cost model. Hardened data center buildings, redundant generators, UPS systems and air conditioning are the outsource data center provider’s problem. Your company purchases high-tech real estate with service level agreements to ensure quality.

An affordable colocation provider with multiple carriers, no cross-connect fees and simple pricing models is hard to find. Need help building a data center cost model? Looking for outsource data center alternatives? Call the simple data center pricing model experts.

Considering an outsource data center or colocation facility? As the IT infrastructure changes, many companies are looking to for a better way to deal with hardened data center facilities, power and cooling . As you consider multiple outsource data center providers and facilities, you will probably find that some are rigid and some are flexible. Here are a few examples:

Some outsource data centers provide rack space to clients. Others provide private cages so clients can build their own “branch office” inside the colocation facility. Some data centers provide racks; in other facilities, you can bring your own.

Many data centers are limited on the number of telecom providers and how you can connect. Carrier neutral data centers offer multiple providers. Some data centers charge monthly add-on fees called cross connect fees. to connect to the telecom carriers. Other data centers charge no cross connect fees to access multiple carriers.

Data center pricing models vary widely. Data center power costs can be billed based on circuit size or by actual usage. Power configurations may be limited to a few circuit types. Check for minimums and maximums associated with power and rack counts.

Remember affordable colocation and flexibility are not mutually exclusive. Looking for a flexible outsource data center? Call Lifeline Data Centers, 317.423.2591 .

For companies located in Chicago, disaster recovery projects may benefit from affordable colocation options in Indianapolis, just three hours away.

CIO strategies that include outsource data center facilities are saving companies money and improving uptime.  The cost of downtime is getting higher for companies of all sizes.  Colocation pricing models can help companies move out of the capital expenses associated with building and maintaining internal enterprise data centers .

Whether you use affordable colocation in Indianapolis for primary data center space or a disaster recovery center, you’ll be sure to get a great value, high uptime, and access to plenty of connectivity.

In part 1 of this series, I talked about how pricing models for outsource data center and colocation providers vary greatly.  To recap, a colocation facility typically provides

1. hardened building
2. redundant power
3. redundant cooling
4. rack space, private cages, or both
5. security
6. access to telecommunications services
7. professional services

From this list of seven services, the first five relate to facilities, or physical plant.  It’s pretty easy to compare building quality, power and cooling infrastructures.  But outsource data center providers differ greatly on how they offer up space to clients.  And security can also vary greatly.

Some outsource data centers offer space in their shared racks only.  Others allow you to bring your racks/cabinets into shared spaces. Others provide private cages or suites.  Private cages or suites give you additional security and a "branch office," in the data center. Pricing is usually per cabinet or by floor space, or both.

Since security will vary greatly, make sure that the data center provider matches up with any regulatory issues that govern your business, along with any company-specific concerns.  More sophisticated security often carries a higher cost.

Prices and add-on charges also vary greatly for telecommunications services.  Some data centers offer their own bandwidth and point-to-point circuits to clients.  These circuits are typically telecom carrier circuits that are being resold to you at a markup.  Watch for multiple add-on fees like port charges and maintenance charges.  Other data centers offer access directly to the carriers, but charge a monthly fee for the privilege of remaining connected.  This add-on fee is called a cross-connect fee and they usually run $50 to $200 per month.  Carrier neutral data centers offer bandwidth from many carriers.  Many do not charge monthly cross-connect fees.  More choices and less add-on fees are better when it comes to telecom.  Carrier neutral data centers provide more competitive pricing,  and that benefits you, the client.

Power is another area where add-on fees are rampant.  Many outsource data centers provide a base level of power per cabinet and charge add-on fees for additional power used over that base level.  While this makes sense (power is one of the biggest overhead items), some charge by circuit size rather than by actual power draw, which may penalizes you greatly depending on your power usage.  Some colocation providers charge by amps, some charge by KW.  You should do the conversions so you clearly understand what your additional power may cost in comparison to other providers.  The provider should be able to help you estimate what your actual power draws will be based on the equipment you have.

Pricing for tier IV data centers would seem to be higher than lower tiers, but this is often not the case.  Tier IV facilities are hardened data centers and have redundant "AB" power and redundant cooling systems that are concurrently maintainable.  Tier IV data centers provide the highest levels of uptime, which is one of the the main reasons you should consider an outsource data center.  Strongly weigh the tier level in your selection.

Finally professional services pricing varies greatly as well.  Some data centers charge hourly based on usage, some force you to buy block hours, and some require you to use their professional services for certain tasks.  Ask yourself if the rules match your needs and if the pricing seems reasonable compared to your other choices.

If you have a hard time understanding the outsource data center’s pricing model, you may want to consider that to be a red flag.  Simple pricing models often are indicators of how easy it will be to do business with an enterprise data center provider.