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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Consider the what it takes for 99.995% uptime enterprise data center facilities management:

F5 tornado resistant data center building- for Midwest colocation

Full data center power redundancy – multiple power feeds, generators, UPS systems and rack feeds

Data center cooling redundancy – multiple, concurrently maintainable cooling systems

Physical security – two factor authentication and multiple layers of loggable physical security

Fire suppression – Reliable, industry standard systems with regular testing and maintenance

Data center compliance and certifications – from SAS 70 to SSAE 16, HIPAA, Sarbanes Oxley, FDA, FISMA and NIST certifications are just a few of the standards

Telecomm redundancy – Multiple telecommuncations feeds with separate entrances into the building

These requirements have nothing to do with Information Technology. They are facilities problems. If a colocation provider can take these requirements off your hands, you’re free to focus on data center management of your business, the applications that support it, and your underlying IT infrastructure.

Yes, wholesale colocation providers can simplify data center management. And if you’re selective, you can use the colocation provider to engineer higher data center uptime levels. Look for a wholesale colocation provider that delivers hardened data centers, N+N data center redundancy, multiple carriers, no cross connect fees, and 99.995% uptime. Power billing based on utilization is key. And don’t forget to shop for low data center power costs.

Wholesale colocation lets you stop worrying about data center facilities management.

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A small but growing number of data centers are slashing their cooling costs by using the environment as their chiller, tapping nearby rivers, underground lakes, wells and even the Baltic Sea. A new project in Norway plans to draw cold water from an adjacent fjord and use it to cool data halls.

The Green Mountain Data Center is located on the shores of the island of Rennesoy, inside concrete buildings within caves carved out of the mountain. Racks of servers will now fill underground halls that once stored ammunition for NATO.

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Is your internal data center expensive to operate? Forget what’s in the racks. I’m not talking about servers, networking equipment and storage. I’m talking about facilities: your raised floor, your security, your power, your cooling, your telecommunications infrastructure and your fire suppression. How expensive is it to maintain?

Operating a data center in-house is expensive. Real estate floor space costs, raised flooring, reliable air conditioning systems, specialized security and fire protection all drive up the data center capital costs. Small data centers can easily exceed $1 million in capital up front.

Data center power and cooling redundancy is expensive. Multiple UPS systems are fairly common. Dual generators are rare. Rarer still are in-house data centers have two utility feeds. Data center capital costs are high, but the costs of maintaining and operating generators and UPS systems are high as well. N+N data center redundancy (two of everything) is prohibitively expensive for many organizations. You can’t deliver high uptime without power and cooling redundancy, yet uptime requirements continue to rise.

Staffing is expensive. Do you dedicate half an FTE or more to the maintenance of the data center?

Data center compliance and certifications are expensive. SAS70 (Now SSAE 16) data center certification audits start at about $20,000. Other certifications like the Uptime Institute’s Tier IV data center certification can cost more.

Not only are the data center capital and operating costs high, they’re also unpredictable.

How do you control costs?

Wholesale colocation offers an interesting solution. Wholesale data center providers build and operate high-tech real estate. Here are a few of the reasons that organizations choose to outsource the data center facilities.

You can rent the space you need in these giant data centers.

You can still have full control of your IT equipment and telecom infrastructure.

You can benefit from N+N data center redundancy in power, cooling, and telecom to improve uptime.

In a select few outsourced hardened data centers, you can protect your mission critical systems from F5 tornadoes and other regional risks.

Some Midwest colocation providers offer you access to multiple telecommunications providers with no cross connect fees. You can build telecom hubs to better manage the money spent on telecommunications.

You can trade capital costs for operating costs.

You can build a highly predictable cost model that allows for growth and change.

Sick of getting nickel and dimed to death? Call the outsourced data center experts.

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The four generator sets power the 40,000 servers in an N+1 configuration, and they provide the power to operate the cooling and other building services necessary to keep the data center alive when the power goes out. N+1 refers to a widely used practice in IT to allow for at least one extra system or a set of systems that will serve as a backup in case of failure.

It’s all on a grand scale. The rows of server racks seem to go on forever, networking equipment rooms line each side of the building. The main hallway of the building seems to stretch into infinity. In short, 1&1′s data center is one big place.

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In January, Verizon bought the pioneer cloud company Terremark for $1.4 billion. Three months later, CenturyLink announced it would buy managed services host (and cloud infrastructure provider) Savvis for $2.5 billion. In June, a subsidiary of Japan’s telecom giant, NTT, bought Opsource to establish a cloud solutions business unit.

What do you get when you marry cloud data centers to a telecommunications company? My answer is: the beginnings of a cloud network, a chain of linked data centers that in some cases bring two or more data centers into a position of backing each other up. That’s something many enterprises would value as they move workloads into the cloud. The service freeze in Amazon Web Services’ northern Virginia center over the Easter weekend served as a reminder of the value of geographic distribution when it comes to backup and recovery.

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Creating a new data center from scratch allows an organization to plan for the greatest amount of customization. However, the significant investment in time, construction, hardware and support is prohibitive for many enterprises. Reconfiguring an existing data center is efficient and cost-effective, but it cannot always fully address an enterprise’s requirements.

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Cloud computing and cloud services receive so much press that many people, even IT professionals, assume that most outsource data centers deliver cloud services including virtualized servers, storage, network and IT services. But not all data centers offer cloud computing.

Data center services fall along a simple spectrum. At one end is colocation, also known as wholesale data center, outsource data center, or off-site computer room facilities. Colocation offers a few key features:

• Hardened data center facilities – sturdy F5 tornado resistant data centers
• Power redundancy – dual utility feeds, generators, and UPS for 99.995% uptime or better
• Cooling redundancy – Multiple chiller loops and air handlers with concurrent maintainability
• Fire suppression
• Security
• Access to multiple telecommunications providers.

At the other end is a pure service model where clients own no hardware and “rent” software, hardware, network, and storage. Common classifications of cloud computing include:

• Software as a service – software applications available via the Internet
• Platform as a service – development and delivery environments for specific software platforms
• Infrastructure as a service – everything but the kitchen sink: network, security, servers, storage and IT services.

Today, most outsource data centers live somewhere in between. These data centers offer space, power, cooling, security and fire suppression, along with IT services such as shared or dedicated routers, switches, storage and servers.

Wholesale colocation is like a high-tech landlord. Clients who want the ability to own/lease and control their own hardware tend to choose colocation. They’re happy to let the “colo” worry about power, cooling, sturdy buildings, fire suppression and security. But they want to retain control over hardware, networks and storage.

Cloud computing is more of a full service offering including hardware, software and services. Clients who want to reduce the IT burden inside an organization choose cloud computing. There are often cost savings in leveraging shared infrastructures that cloud computing providers deliver.

Wholesale data centers are often the backdrop for cloud computing services. Colocation does not offer cloud computing to its clients, but it’s a great place for implementing a cloud .

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Your data center is probably more important to your business than it was 10 years ago. Organizations of all sizes have come to expect 99.995% uptime (the same level as a Tier IV data center) to keep revenues flowing and to retain customers, and to communicate with key vendors.

But it is shockingly expensive to build an enterprise data center with such requirements. Some of the requirements to meet such high levels of uptime include:

• Hardened data center facilities: In Midwest data centers, F5 tornado resistant data centers are important.
• Data center power redundancy: Can you afford two utility feeds, two generators, and two UPS systems?
• Data center cooling redundancy: You’ll need at least two air conditioning systems with double the air conditioning your require.
• Data center compliance and certifications: Vendors, clients and the government are requiring expensive certifications such as SAS 70 certified data centers and TIA 942 compliant data centers.
• Security: Physical data center security includes the costs, implementation and maintenance of access cards, PIN pads, locking cabinets, and security cameras with staffing to monitor them.

Some companies choose to “get out of the hardware business” and move their critical applications to cloud service providers like Rackspace and Amazon. Many find that the cost of such a move can be expensive, variable, and hard to forecast.

Other companies choose the high-tech landlord route. They search for an outsource data center with key features:

Experience – Companies are choosing outsource colocation facilities that have a track record
Leadership – Are the owners involved in day-to-day operations?
Carrier neutral data center – Multiple telecom providers are available
No cross-connect fees – No monthly fees to remain connected to the telecom carriers
Simple data center pricing model – Easy to understand and easy to forecast
Ability to grow and change – Can you get extra space if you need it?

Do you have the IT expertise you need to make your business successful? Do you need a venue to deliver your mission critical applications? If the answer is yes, contact a high-tech landlord to find out more.

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It’s an expensive proposition. You might want to investigate your options, including infrastructure as a service (IaaS) , and outsource data center facilities, also known as colocation.

IaaS give you the ability to get out of the computer hardware business. You can move your server images to a shared, virtualized environment and run your servers from the cloud. This is very attractive to many businesses, because of low capital costs and low internal employee requirements.

Colocation, also known as outsource data center, provides hardened data center buildings, reliable power, cooling and access to telecommunications. Many companies move their primary data centers to colocation facilities. These companies reap many benefits from colocation:

99.995% uptime, if the facility meets Tier IV data center uptime standards
Fully redundant data center power and cooling for minimal downtime
Data center security including multiple factor authentication, background checks and physical access control
Access to multiple telecommunications providers

A few outsource data centers offer additional benefits:
Private cages for workspace and growth
Pay-as-you-grow pricing
Carrier neutral data centers with many telecom providers and competitive pricing
No monthly cross connect fees, so telecom pricing is reduced even further
Private office space for business continuity or primary offices

Moving your data center to an affordable colocation facility can be the last data center move you need to make. For many businesses, it makes financial sense to de-couple the data center location from the location of the business headquarters.

Want to learn more? Call Midwest data center facilities provider Lifeline Data Centers at 317.423.2591.

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