Data center strategies with no data center power redundancy?

First came data centers with no chillers. But is the industry ready for a data center with no UPS and no generators?

That seems like a radical concept. But Yahoo is considering going without UPS (uninterruptible power supply) and generators for some future data center projects. It’s not alone in advocating design choices that represent a huge departure from current practice. A number of data center designers are urging clients to consider limiting UPS support to loads that are genuinely critical.

more of the Data Center Knowledge article from Rich Miller

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.

What sort of data center redundancy do you have? This question is really two questions:

Do you protect your critical data in multiple data center facilities?
Do the data centers you use deliver a “two of everything” approach to HVAC and power?

You probably only care about data center redundancy if you need high reliability in your key computer systems. High reliability is important if data center downtime is costly to your company. Avoiding data center downtime is usually the driver for data center redundancy. Typical requirements are at least 99.995% uptime, which is 28 minutes of downtime per year or less. 99.995% uptime is the expectation for a Tier IV data center.

Do you protect your critical data in multiple data center facilities? Companies use multiple data center facilities to prevent downtime associated with the loss of a single data center. This used to mean a primary site that did all the work and a secondary site that could take over if the primary site failed. But newer technologies like virtualization, load balancing and storage replication are allowing clients to instead spread the computing power across multiple sites. This approach can deliver more value from a second (often outsourced) data center.

Do the data centers you use deliver a “two of everything” approach to HVAC and power? Most of the data center ratings systems are concerned with:
Data center power redundancy – two or more utility feeds, generators, UPS systems and outlets to each rack.
Cooling redundancy – multiple air conditioning systems
Multiple telecom entrances
And even multiple entrances to the property.
This “two of everything” approach minimizes downtime associated with both failure and the need for maintenance.
Redundancies are required for the tier IV data center rating, and the TIA-942 compliant data center rating.

Data center redundancy is critical if you require high uptime for your systems. Looking for a highly redundant outsource data center solution? Call Lifeline Data Centers at 317.423.2591

What does data center downtime cost your business? Do you lose credibility, revenue, profits, or clients when your systems are down?

If your cost of downtime is low, don’t waste your time reading this post. It isn’t for you.

If your cost of downtime is lost credibility, lost revenues, lost profits, and/or lost clients, what can you do to reduce your risks?

Use the 80/20 principle. Power and cooling issues account for a majority of prolonged outages in your organization’s data center. You can reduce the risk of power outages with data center power redundancy: two utility feeds, two generators, two UPS systems feeding your critical systems. You can reduce the risks of cooling failures by employing two or more air conditioning systems to cool your equipment, along with two or more ways to remove hot air from your data center environment.

The problem is that building data center facilities with these features is extremely expensive. The capital costs of a 1500 foot data center can easily exceed $1 million. But a few select outsource data center facilities can solve downtime problems at prices comparable to your existing enterprise data center.

Compare outsource computer room facilities with the cost of operating your own. Look for data centers that have N+N (2N) redundancy. Many outsource facilities claim to have data center power redundancy and multiple cooling systems. Make sure you’re getting what you pay for.

Don’t overthink this. Thanks to the lower costs of telecom, It’s no longer about where your critical systems reside. It’s mostly a math problem. Compare the cost of downtime plus the costs of operating your existing computer room to outsource data center facilities. You may be surprised.

High availability data center facilities with 99.995% uptime or better can solve many downtime problems. Affordable colocation facilities (outsource data centers) can help you manage your costs while improving your data center uptime.

Building your own data center? It may cost you dearly.

First, ask yourself how much data center downtime can you stand. Building a data center for 99.995% uptime (28 minutes of data center downtime per year or less) is expensive. Can you afford two utility feeds from your power provider? Will you buy two generators, two UPS systems, and two independent HVAC systems? These levels of data center redundancy are the only proven way to reduce or eliminate the risk of downtime. Will your new building meet these data center power redundancy standards, including hardened data centers (facilities that are F5 tornado resistant data centers)?

Second, what are the hidden, ongoing maintenance costs of building your own data center? Are you including the costs of cleaning under the raised floor? Have you counted the costs of preventative maintenance on your multiple power feeds, generators, UPSes and HVAC systems? Are you able to increase power or space as needed? What is the FTE burden associated with the management and maintenance of an in-house data center?

Third, what levels of data center compliance does the government, your vendors, and your clients require? Many outsource computer room facilities maintain multiple certification levels so you don’t have to spend the time and money doing it yourself.

Do the math. Check the figures. If renting space makes more financial sense than building, use the high uptime, affordable colocation facilities of Lifeline Data Centers. Call us at 317.423.2591.

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.

The stuff you can’t (or won’t) build into your data center could be the cause of a future outage.

What stuff am I talking about?

• Data center power redundancy – dual utility power feeds, dual generators, and dual UPS systems for every cabinet of equipment in the data center.
• Data center cooling redundancy – dual cooling systems
• Hardened data center facilities – F5 tornado resistant buildings, engineered to withstand regional disasters
• Multiple telecommunications carriers – two or more choices for telecom circuits so you can pick the best carrier for your bandwidth and transport needs

You might be surprised at how rare it is, both in internal and outsource data centers, to have true N+N data center power redundancy. True power and cooling redundancy in the data center provides for 99.995% uptime (27 minutes of downtime per year or less). That is the same level of uptime as a tier IV data center. That’s because N+N data center redundancy (also known as 2N redundancy) allows for failures of equipment and for concurrent maintainability with no data center down time.

Why can’t you build these features into your data center? Or why won’t you? Data center capital costs are the number one reason. Generators cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. A second utility power feed into a facility can easily cost a quarter of a million dollars. Will the CFO sign off on such large capital expenditures when he knows your company can rent better facilities for less money?

Lifeline Data Centers provides affordable colocation facilities to keep uptime high and costs under control. And Lifeline is a carrier neutral data center with no cross connect fees. Need data center? Call Lifeline at 317.423.2591.

I talked to a company last week who has been thinking about moving their data center. They have been talking with us for months about moving from another outsource data center into Lifeline. The company is an Internet Services Provider. All of their products are Internet-centric services. The company delivers Internet, web hosting, and applications to their clients.

The company was interested in Lifeline Data Centers for a few reasons. First, they could aggregate bandwidth from multiple carriers with no monthly cross-connect fees. This let them keep bandwidth costs low and maintain good margins. They also liked Lifeline’s data center power redundancy: Lifeline’s N+N power and HVAC configuration could support their needs for high uptime. One of the company’s owners liked the idea of Lifeline “always keeping an eye on the power.”

Last week, I spoke to them again. Some parts of their business are in decline, and other parts are growing. To cut costs, they are moving all their equipment out of the old outsource data center and into their new office building.

Are they really cutting costs?

What would a prolonged power outage cost this company ? ALL of the services they deliver rely on power, Internet services and application availability. Will their customers stay customers if a backhoe digs up the power line in front of the new office building and knocks out power for 8 hours? Or will the clients look elsewhere at the hundreds of vendors offering the same services for lower prices?

What is the company’s cost of losing a deal to a competitive Internet Services Provider? Will the competition win the deal because they have data center compliance, certifications, F5 tornado resistant data center buildings, and more telecom choices?

Who’s keeping an eye on your power? Who’s making sure that your computer room reliability is better than your competition? Who’s helping you take care of your clients?

Who is Indy’s largest data center? In the last few weeks, many of my friends, Lifeline Data Centers’ clients and prospects have asked me this question. The reason they’re asking is because another Midwest colocation provider has been advertising in press releases and pay-per-click as “Indy’s largest datacenter.”

Does it really matter? I can understand why you might use the size of a data center as a starting point for selection. Here is a list of other key issues you should also consider:

• Does the provider deliver 99.995 data center uptime (less than 27 minutes of downtime per year)?
• Is the data center pricing model easy to understand?
• How does the outsource data center charge you for power and cooling?
• Does the provider offer hardened data center facilities, built to withstand tornadoes and other disasters?
• How is the data center power redundancy engineered? Are there single points of failure?
• How many telecommuncations providers are available?
• Does the outsource data center charge monthly cross connect fees?
• Are private cages, shared space, office and staging space available?
• Are the critical power. cooling, and security systems maintained in-house or outsourced?
• How long has the data center provider been in business?
• Who owns the outsource data center? Are the owners involved in daily operations?
• How much data center expertise does the outsource data center team possess?

So who is Indianapolis’ largest data center? It depends, of course, on how you measure it.

• Data center square feet occupied
• Data center square feet available
• Campus size
• Data center square feet available with room for expansion

Here are the facts about Lifeline Data Centers:

• Two locations
• 70,000 square feet of data center floor space available in existing buildings
• 30,000 square feet of data center floor space occupied
• Downtown building, along with a 41-acre second campus
• Room for 260,000 square feet of data center, 300,000 square feet of office

Looking to improve your computer system reliability and reduce costs? Moving your data center? Find out more about affordable colocation. Call Lifeline at 317.423.2591.

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.