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.

A CIO strategy that includes flexible data center facilities can help organizations through changes in the economy, lines of business, revenues and profitability.

Flexible data center facilities help CIOs add racks, power density and temporary systems as needed. Outsource colocation and outsource data center facilities can deliver this flexibility as an operating expense rather than capital costs.

Outsource data center facilities that offer private cage space and separate square footage/active rack charges allow organizations to build for growth and change.

Carrier neutral data centers with no cross connect fees and help control long-term telecom costs and improve network reliability

Building a hardened data center with 99.995% uptime (equal to Tier IV data center ratings) is cost-prohibitive for most companies. Leasing space in an affordable colocation facility with 99.995% uptime is easy.

Maintaining data center compliance is expensive. Data center certifications can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to implement and tens of thousands to maintain. Outsource data centers let you outsource data center compliance, such as SAS 70 data center certification, TIA-942 compliant data centers, HIPAA, FDA, FISMA and other regulations.

The most flexible Midwest colocation provider, Lifeline Data Centers, can help you make your data center flexibility strategy happen. Call 317.423.2591.

Is your data in a F5 tornado resistant data center? The risk of tornado is the biggest threat for Midwest data center facilities. Whether it’s Midwest colocation or in-house data centers, how do companies protect against the threat of tornado?

The most common approach for protecting against tornadoes is to use a hardened data center, built of steel-reinforced concrete. Underground entrances for power and telecommunications are important. Absence of flood plain is important. TIA-942 compliant data centers adhere to all of the important hardening guidelines. Is your data center TI-942 compliant?

Looking for affordable colocation in hardened data center facilities with 99.995% uptime and data center certifications? Call Lifeline Data Centers in Indianapolis at 317.423.2591.

We’re hearing more stories and seeing more companies move their infrastructure out of a virtual environment and back into a physical environment using high-reliability outsourced data centers.

Why are these companies making the switch? Long-term costs. Virtual environments often charge by the resource, i.e. disk, processors, number of servers, and SAN throughput. Companies using virtual infrastructure are finding that the cost of these resources over time becomes too high. If the company is a SaaS provider, the costs eat into profits. Companies using virtual infrastructure for internal IT see an ever-escalating monthly operating expense.

So these companies spend some time evaluating their infrastructure and come up with a suitable hardware/software architecture. It’s much easier these days to build in reliability and redundancy. The companies are using hypervisor software like VMware, multiple physical servers, redundant SANs, dual switches and dual firewalls. They end up with an architecture that can survive multiple failures with no interruptions in service. And often times the hardware/software architecture pays for itself in one year when compared to their virtual environment. Long-term costs go down, and the company ends up having more control over their infrastructure.

The new equipment needs a home. Companies are using affordable colocation rather than expensive IT managed services providers. What are they looking for?

• 99.995% uptime – 27 minutes of downtime per year or less, equal to that of an Uptime Institute certified tier IV data center
• Fair pricing – a simple, easy-to-understand data center pricing model helps with forecasting and incremental growth
• Hardened data center facilities – buildings that are F5 tornado resistant
• Carrier neutral data centers – many choices on telecommunications providers for bandwidth and transport
• No cross connect fees – no monthly add-on fees for connections directly to the carriers
• Data center certifications and compliance – SAS 70 Type II data centers, TIA 942 compliant data centers

What are the savings? Do the math. You may find out that you’re spending too much on your cloud computing data center’s virtual environment.

Do you need to drive the costs out of your application delivery model? Call Lifeline Data Centers at 317.423.2591.

With the current enthusiasm about cloud computing, some have argued that cloud platforms will replace the data center, or reduce the need for physical infrastructure. Or perhaps that all the world’s applications will run out of just five huge cloud computign facilities.

more of the Data Center Knowledge article from Rich Miller

CIOs are reducing risks by employing outsource data centers to solve their compliance problems. CIO strategy now includes leveraging outsource data centers and the certifications and compliance they maintain to help the enterprise meet government regulations.

CIOs have used outsource data centers for years to drive higher uptime and reap the benefits of lower data center capital costs. Now, many companies are using outsource data center facilities to keep compliance costs under control.

Physical security is one of the main data center compliance benefits that outsource data centers provide. Outsource data center facilities employ multiple levels of physical security to meet state and federal regulations. It’s usually less costly to “rent” the physical security than to build physical security and managing the ongoing physical security costs in-house.

Some data center compliance centers around service levels, or uptime. High reliability for enterprise computer systems can only be achieved in “mission critical facilities” that employ N+1 data center power redundancy and other tier IV data center characteristics. Service levels of 99.995% uptime (27 minutes of downtime per year or less) can be be found in affordable colocation facilities. The cost of building an enterprise data center with similar levels of data center uptime usually reaches into the millions, even for a small facility.

Data center compliance pressures are coming from vendors and clients as well. Many companies now require that vendors and clients operate SAS 70 data centers, TIA 942 compliant data centers, tier III or tier IV data centers. The cost of maintaining these certifications alone can pay for outsource colocation facilities.

Would it make more sense for your organization to use compliance-centered outsource data center facilities rather than building and maintaining your own? Call the data center compliance experts to learn more.

Affordable colocation and 99.995% uptime are NOT mutually exclusive. Make sure you understand your outsource data center’s levels of redundancy and the uptime service level agreements in order to get the best combination of uptime and affordability.

Your staff, your clients, and your vendors are expecting a zero downtime data center. But your budget may not be big enough for that level of data center uptime. How do you balance uptime and affordability in your selection process?

If you’re shopping for an outsource data center, you may be asking providers about their Uptime Institute tier rating. Some might say they are tier III data centers. Others may call themselves tier IV data centers. Most are not certified by the Uptime Institute. The cost of certification is prohibitive for many providers. The Uptime Institute Tier Standard: Topology, and its associated white paper are available FREE of charge at http://uptimeinstitute.org/content/view/302/281/ . Likewise, the cost of Uptime Institute membership is prohibitive for many IT organizations. There are a few other rating systems exist for data center redundancy, including the TIA 942 data center standard. How do you evaluate outsource data center alternatives for uptime?

We believe that the better approach to selecting your outsource computer room provider is clearly understand the provider’s specific levels of redundancy and uptime service level agreements.

How do you find out what levels of redundancy exist? Ask tough questions about:

-Hardened data center buildings
-Data center power redundancy
-Cooling systems redundancy
-Telecom entrance redundancy
-Availability of multiple carriers
-Physical security
-SAS 70 data center compliance

You may need to do your homework to learn about critical power and cooling. But understanding the strict detail of a data center’s architecture and the differences between two facilities can make all the difference in the event of an unforseen problem.

If you’re looking for Midwest colocation and affordable data center space with 99.995% uptime (36 minutes of downtime per year or less), give Lifeline Data Centers a call.

Is data center compliance killing your budget?  Are the new demands for compliance putting an extra burden on your scarce IT resources?

Data center compliance is becoming an issue even for small companies.  In addition to federal and state requirements, companies are now faced with clients and vendors who demand certain levels of compliance in order to have a business relationship.

The physical aspects of compliance can often be the most capital intensive and expensive.  Outsourcing data center facilities allows you to outsource data center compliance.  Lifeline Data Centers focuses on compliance in many areas. Here are a few:

• SAS-70 data center compliance
• HIPAA
• FDA
• PCI
• FISMA
• Sarbanes-Oxley
• TIA-942 compliant data center

Are outsource data center facilities the right answer for your business?

This post removed at the request of the Uptime Institute.

Many companies that call us for information ask us what "tier" we are.  The Uptime Institute has established a tiering system that helps companies classify and evaluate data centers and colocation facilities.  The tiering system focuses on a number of categories.

Most data center professionals are concerned with:

• Delivery paths
• Redundant components
• Available watts per square foot
• Raised floor availability and height
• Floor loading
• Utility voltage
• Downtime
• Available support staff

Most of these characteristics are focused on minimizing downtime. Rather than the Uptime Institute tiering system, many clients are now using an uptime service level as their criterion, such as 99.995% uptime, or "4 1/2 9′s."  That equates to 0.4 hours of downtime per year. 

The key components of a 99.995% uptime data center include two active electrical feeds to your equipment, concurrently maintainable generators, UPS and HVAC systems, along with multiple telecom carriers, often in a carrier neutral data center.

Other characteristics such as floor loading, and available watts address high-density enterprise data center implementations that are common in large data centers today.

Lifeline Data Centers builds facilities to be TIA-942 compliant data center facilities. We aim at 99.995% uptime which is an uptime level that can be compared Tier IV data center.  Lifeline does NOT maintain an Uptime Institute certification. 

If downtime is costly to your business, then you should be considering a tier IV data center. If your looking for an affordable colocation facility, take a closer look at Lifeline