The very nature of data centers, that is, the presence of multitudes of computer systems, supporting electrical and telecommunication setups, power backups, storage facilities etc makes the job a totally expert-centric job. The basic idea of relocation is to upgrade your existing facilities, aiding in business continuity etc. Sometimes you need to relocate your server farm only to another part of the same building or top a nearby locality, but sometimes due to mergers and acquisitions, a need may arise when your data center has to be moved to any other part of the country or even to another continent.

But involving experts in the job would ensure that that job is done satisfactorily, safely and quickly without giving any undue concerns to you. As you know, the IT-related systems are physically delicate and as such, any improper handling can harm them. Likewise, the data contained in the storages are highly valuable and may be the life-line of your company which has to be preserved at any cost.

more of the Smart Consumer Buys post from Clair Pennington

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?

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.

The task was to upgrade a 25-year-old data center, built by AT&T during the 1980s to handle mainframe computing. The building was 125,000 square feet; the data center space, 80,000 square feet. In this case, modernization required ripping and replacing most of the facility’s power and cooling infrastructure — all without incurring system downtime.

Gale, the regional data center director for the Denver-based colocation company ViaWest, led the charge, and the process took 18 months.

more of the SearchDataCenter article from Mark Fontecchio

Reuters has reported that Gartner is forecasting server shipment growth percentage in the range of mid to high single digits for 2010; the research firm predicts that the revenue growth rate will lag slightly behind shipment growth, however. These encouraging numbers follow a rather dismal 2009, which saw server revenue decline by 18.3%, with a unit shipment decline of 16.6%, according to Gartner. Research firm IDC estimates server revenue decline at 18.9%, down to $43.2 billion, with unit shipments down 18.6% to 6.6 million units. Thus, IDC’s estimate suggests that unit shipments and revenue kept fairly close pace in their decline, despite Gartner’s estimate that revenue demonstrated a larger percentage decrease than did unit shipments.

more of the Data Center Journal article from Jeffrey Clark

The answer is almost always yes.  Unless your company has in-house expertise on building mission critical facilities like data centers, there may be great value in considering outsource data centers.  Data center capital costs can be outlandish, even for a small facility.  The cost of building facilities with uptime levels that are comparable to Uptime Institute Tier IV data centers is even higher.

Ask yourself these questions:

What level of data center uptime does my company require?  If the company needs 99.995% uptime or better, you should consider outsource data center.

What level of mission critical facilities expertise does my company have on staff?  Is the company prepared to build and maintain facilities in-house?

Does it make more sense to trade data center capital costs for operating expenses?  Is the cost of capital too high?

Does data center compliance play a role in my company’s decision?  Outsource data centers with a focus on compliance can solve problems that cost a company tens of thousands of dollars to handle on their own.

Do you have more questions?  Call the outsource data center and compliance experts at Lifeline Data Centers.

The impact of critical computer system downtime to your business is the major factor in your decision to build or outsource.  If the cost of downtime is high, you will need to build a tier III or tier IV data center to avoid downtime.  The capital costs associated with building a hardened data center facility with multiple power feeds, multiple air conditioning units, and SAS 70 data center compliance can easily add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars, even for a small computer room.

Consider how affordable colocation can be as compared to building your own.  Many companies benefit by avoiding the capital expenses of building a data center and instead leasing space as an operating expense.  If the company culture is slanted towards building your own, make it clear to the stakeholders that redundancy is important.  Many companies will buy a single generator, UPS and data center air conditioning unit.  Far fewer will spend the capital money to build in the true redundancy.  When the stakeholders clearly understand the cost of downtime in hard dollar revenue or credibility, they have the information they need to make the right decision.

Flexibility is the other key factor is the build versus outsource equation.  If your data center is experiencing growth and change, an outsource solution can help eliminate the barriers associated with the changes.  And with an outsource data center solution, you can move your office every few years and suffer little or no impact to your critical systems availability.

Keep in mind that there is no wrong decision when it comes to building your down data center or using and outsource data center facility.  Do your homework and do the math;  you may find it cheaper and more flexible in the long run to throw the data center facilities problem over the wall to data center experts.