Cooling is close behind, because for every 1 kW of power required to run IT equipment, about 1 kW of cooling is required to remove the heat.

Eaton’s modular power is a sensible approach to building an incremental power infrastructure in-house.

Colocation is a sensible alternative to eliminate the power and cooling problems. But all wholesale colocation providers are not created equal. The provider will need to allow room for growth, and provide usage based power billing. This approach providers for more granular, incremental growth in the costs of operating data center floor space, power and cooling.

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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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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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Amazon’s data center guru James Hamilton is pretty clear that he sees no reason for most companies to keep constructing new data centers from scratch, but if they have a huge compute load and really have to, they should build way more capacity than they need and sell off the excess a la Amazon itself.

While Hamilton has a vested interest in people moving their compute loads to Amazon’s infrastructure, his build big or don’t build at all mantra resonates with several other IT experts. The consensus: It makes sense for most companies to trust their data center needs to the real experts in data centers — the companies that build and run data centers as a business. More companies will start moving more of their new compute loads — maybe not necessarily all the mission critical stuff — to the big cloud operators. That roster includes the aforementioned players as well as Google, Microsoft, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle and others that are building out more of their own data center capacity for use by customers.

More of the GigaOM post from Barb Darrow

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Data center requirements have changed over the last 10-15 years. A decade or two ago, the two top criteria to consider when choosing a location were network accessibility and access to skilled talent. Fiber networks that connect data centers to the rest of the world were concentrated around metropolitan areas like New York City and San Francisco, but that is no longer the case. Sure, there will always be distance and latency concerns to consider, but the proliferation of high-speed network infrastructure means it is no longer the driving factor it once was. Additionally, data center talent was also limited to where the data centers were. That still holds true, except data centers have spread considerably and so has the skills base. In addition, remote monitoring and management solutions now make it possible for IT administrators to do most of their data center work remotely.

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Well, current federal CIO Steven VanRoekel says the plan is exceeding original plans and targets. In this blog on the White House’s Office ofManagement and Budget website, VanRoekel says by the end of 2012, the federal government will have closed 740 data centers. By the end of 2015, it will consolidate at least 1200 data centers, or at least 40% of identified data centers – a goal that VanRoekel writes “requires us to continue aggressively rooting out duplication and waste in our expanded baseline of 3,133 data centers.”

The data centers comprise all sizes, ranging from some as big as a football field to others as small as a closet. They represent, VanRoekel reports, billions in wasted capital.

The consolidation and closures are expected to save taxpayers billions of dollars by cutting spending on underutilized hardware, software and operations; improving cyber security; shrinking energy and real estate footprints; and taking advantage of innovative technologies such as cloud computing.

The government recently expanded its initial plan, and in the fall VanRoekel and team announced plans to include in the consolidation initiative data centers of any size, not just those that are 500 square feet and above. Moreover, the government says it is paying close attention to areas within the remaining data centers where greater efficiencies can be realized.

More of the ITWorld article from Beth Bacheldor

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Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) has been called “The Holy Grail” of data center energy metrics so often that we actually found it impossible to find out who coined the term. As time, technology and sustainability efforts evolve, the PUE metric is no longer the stopping point for energy efficiency measurement, but it has become just one more piece in the larger picture.

What does PUE do? It measures how much of the energy entering a data center facility is used to power the computing devices within, versus the amount used for cooling and overhead of the facility. That’s it.

More of the Data Center Knowledge article from Mark Davidson

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Since January, David Filas, a data center engineer at Trinity Health, has been running decommissioned servers, networking gear and storage systems in a simple generator shed on the grounds of the healthcare provider’s headquarters in Novi, Mich.

Filas hopes that by January 2012, this project will have convinced his colleagues that IT equipment isn’t as fragile as they think it is .

So far, the equipment has stayed up and running, enduring Michigan’s wide seasonal variations in temperature and humidity levels, Filas said at the Afcom data center conference in Orlando last month.

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A capital expenditure is an investment in a long-term asset, typically physical assets such as buildings or machinery.

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Many factors play in to the selection secondary data center and office space locations. A good CIO strategy includes multiple geographies in an evaluation of disaster recovery centers. For some organizations Midwest colocation outside of Chicago might be a better solution.

Standard features that many organizations look for when considering disaster recovery centers include:

Hardened data center facilities – With Midwest colocation, F5 tornado resistant data centers building are important, along with earthquake resistant facilities in some areas.

99.995% uptime or better – This is the uptime level expected from Tier IV data centers. Some IT professionals consider the uptime is a DR center to be less important than in the primary data center. If your organization is doing real-time or near-real time data replication, data center uptime in your disaster recovery center is likely as important as in your primary enterprise data center.

Multiple carriers with no cross-connect fees – Access to multiple telecom carriers ensures diverse and reliable connectivity in the event of a disaster, or on an ongoing basis with real-time replication. Data centers with no monthly cross connect fees significantly reduce ongoing costs.

Data center compliance and certification – Compliance and certifications in the disaster recovery center are just as important as the primary data center.

Data center pricing model – Simple is better. Most organizations seem to prefer to pay for power, cooling and space incrementally as they use it.

Advantages to Midwest data centers located outside of Chicago include:

• Geographic diversity, especially for Chicago-based organizations.
• Overall lower costs, including, lower data center power costs, lower costs of construction labor, and lower data center capital costs.
• A theoretically lower risk from placing the disaster recovery center outside of one of the USA’s five largest cities.

Wholesale colocation providers offer the most flexibility for organizations that prefer to own and control their own telecom connections, network, servers and storage. Some wholesale data centers offer disaster recovery office space. This space can be custom fit by the organization to use for emergency call centers or workspace recovery.

Considering disaster recovery options in Chicago? Consider Midwest colocation providers outside of Chicago in your search.

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