Reliability is becoming the most important commodity in the data center. Most of your customers would agree that reliable access to your computer systems is more important that application features.

IT staff are good at supporting applications. They are usually talented at designing reliability into your most important business software: application, server and connection redundancy, along with data replication and fail-over procedures. How good is your staff manage the facilities side of reliability?

The lion’s share of outages are related to data center downtime. Power, cooling, security, fire suppression and building failures account for the majority of outages in the enterprise data center.

Large and small companies alike are investigating alternatives to the in-house data center. Some consider outsource data center facilities for high data center uptime (high reliability). 99.995% uptime (27 minutes of downtime per year or less) is the level expected of tier IV data centers. Many CIOs feel that their most mission critical applications require mission critical facilities with 99.995% uptime.

Selecting outsource data center facilities can be tricky. Also known as colocation facilities, these outsourced data centers come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Some focus on IT services. A few focus on providing high-tech real estate with flexible options, so that savvy IT organizations can grow and change without barriers.

Wholesale colocation facilities like Lifeline Data Centers in Indianapolis, Indiana

• Affordable colocation
• 99.995% uptime
• Hardened data center facilities
• Low data center power costs
• Pay as you grow rack and power pricing
• Fifteen telecom carriers in a carrier-neutral data center
• No monthly cross-connect fees
• SAS70 data center compliance
• Data center compliance: HIPAA, FDA, NIST and TIA 942 compliant data centers

Need more reliability? Use wholesale colocation facilities. Leverage decades of experience at Lifeline Data Centers, 317.423.2591.

Does data center uptime equal your company’s reputation?

The reliability of your most important computer systems affects the way that you interact with customers and vendors. If your customer-facing systems are not reliable, you run the risk of losing revenues, profits and customers.

If your internal computer systems are not reliable, your employees have a harder time selling, making products, or delivering services. If your customer service systems are down, you’re risking your reputation, and the loss of customers.

How reliable do your systems need to be? The computer industry has a few different metrics for uptime (reliability). 4 1/2 9s of uptime (99.995% uptime) = 28 minutes of downtime per year or less. This is the expected level of downtime for tier IV data centers, the highest uptime tier.

But building and operating an enterprise data center with this level of reliability is expensive. It takes millions of dollars of capital, along with FTEs and ongoing maintenance costs. How does an IT department deliver data center reliability without spending all the profits?

Smart IT departments consider outsource data center facilities as an alternative to building their own. Often times, these companies use the outsource data center as the primary data center, because high uptime and high reliability are most important for a company’s primary computer systems.

Wholesale colocation facilities and wholesale computer rooms like Lifeline Data Centers provide a low-cost alternative to building out a high-reliability data center. And other benefits like data center certifications and data center compliance come along with the package, reducing the burden of compliance for the company.

How important is reliability to your mission critical computer systems? Is your company’s reputation on the line? Call Lifeline Data Centers at 317.423.2591 to learn how your company can improve data center uptime and control long-term costs.

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

UK businesses are primarily concerned with SaaS and cloud computing with 31 per cent saying it is driving increased use of data centre capacity, according to a national survey commissioned by Telehouse of over 100 senior IT professionals. With Gartner forecasting that the cloud computing market could reach a global value of $150 billion by 2013, it is unsurprising that 83 per cent of respondents predict that their data centre requirement will also grow in the next three years. Looking further ahead, over 80 per cent of respondents thought that securing access to additional data centre capacity would be either ‘critical’ or ‘important’ in the next five years.

Only four per cent said governance is driving increased use of data centre capacity in their organisation, suggesting that some businesses may potentially be overlooking the data demands of governance. Currently, businesses are required to retain a vast amount of electronic data for possible government inspection. Key regulatory legislation affecting UK businesses include Basle II and MiFID in banking, HIPAA for the pharmaceutical industry or Sarbanes-Oxley for companies with a US footprint.

more of the Cloud Computing Journal aritcle

Are you wasting time and resources on your data center?

If your company relies on your computer systems to generate revenue, deliver services, or manufacture your product, your computer room facilities can be a source or worry. You spend lots of money on power, cooling, equipment and labor to keep your most important computer systems up, running and reliable.

But are you wasting time and resources on your data center when you could be spending less money for more reliability?

If you care about uptime, you probably have a generator for your computer room. You may have one or more power conditioning systems with battery backup to protect from a power outage. If you are in the Midwest, you probably have a hardened data center that can withstand an F5 tornado. Your company has likely spent significant capital dollars on your computer room, all to improve the reliability (data center uptime) of your key computer systems.

But is it enough? The answer is another question. How many minutes, hours or days can your systems be down? 99.995% uptime is 28 minutes of downtime per year or less. But it takes two of everything (N+N data center redundancy) to deliver 99.995% uptime. That means TWO electrical feeds from the power company, TWO generators, TWO power conditioning systems, and two air conditioners, to start.

Companies uptime requirements have changed. Even small companies “bet their business” on their computer systems. Will your company spend the money to build a 99.995% level of reliability?

If your company needs 99.995% uptime, or anything close to that level, consider affordable colocation providers: carrier neutral, outsource data center facilities with shared space, private cages, and no cross connect fees. The cost per month may be less than your spending now. The reliability and data center uptime will likely be higher than what you can build. Lifeline Data Centers is at 317.423.2591. Email us if you’d like more information on improving your data center uptime.

It is an open secret that electrical costs of data centres are skyrocketing, says power management firm Raritan, which recommends better measurement strategies as the first step to better cost containment.

“Though the price of servers has come down, the cost of power is rising incrementally; about 31 per cent according to data from the independent organisation–Green Grid,” said Raritan vice president, Asia Pacific and Japan — sales and marketing, Chris McPherson, speaking in Malaysia recently.

“Adopting a green infrastructure approach does make immediate cost savings as well as give certain corporate brand positioning advantages,” said McPherson. “However, the ability to measure energy efficiency is the real first step to managing power costs.”

More of the Network World article from Avantikumar

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.

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.

99.995% uptime equals 27 minutes of downtime per year or less. But what it really means is the level of credibility your company has in the marketplace.

We live in a real-time world. Customer facing computer systems sell your products. Manufacturing systems ensure production and quality in the products you make. Internal systems keep employees productive. Minutes of downtime can cost thousands of dollars. Data center downtime costs your company revenue, profits and credibility.

So how do you achieve high levels of uptime?

First, understand the cost of downtime. What does it cost your company to have critical systems down? Downtime is often calculated per application. Knowing the cost helps you focus efforts on data center uptime where it counts most.

Second, make sure your data center facilities have at least 2 of every critical component. This is known as 2N or N+N data center redundancy. Anything less than two utility feeds, two generators, two UPS systems and two HVAC systems puts you at risk for data center downtime. You can also improve uptime by using hardened data center facilities, built to withstand the regional risks. F5 tornado resistant data centers are important in the midwest.

Third, build your systems and applications using the same 2N architecture to protect against failure and to allow for concurrent maintainability.

Your data center uptime is your system reliability. Your system reliability is your credibility in the marketplace. Can’t afford the data center capital costs of 2N architecture? Use the outsource data center facilities of Lifeline Data Centers. Call us at 317.423.2591.