Archive for the ‘Tier 4 Data Center’ Category
The illusion of data center uptime
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
Some companies value data center uptime more than others. These companies are in markets where their computer downtime can cost them sales, profits and clients. These companies often have in-house data centers with more sophisticated equipment to keep the computer systems up and running in the event of a power outage. These companies invest tens of thousands of capital dollars in battery backup, power conditioning and generators to protect from downtime. A few even spend thousands more in capital dollars to makes the air conditioning more reliable.
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.
Data center building, power, and cooling disciplines are not IT disciplines.
Your expertise on applications, software architecture, network, server and storage design is not expertise on building tier IV data centers with 99.995% uptime.
Likewise, experts on mission critical facilities like hardened data center buildings, data center power redundancy and cooling are rarely experts on mission critical systems and applications.
A best-of-breed CIO strategy would include expertise in both information technology systems design and highly available data center facilities. How is this done?
If your organization likes to “roll your own” enterprise data center, you probably hire design/build experts to help you accomplish your goals of high data center uptime. Although the capital costs associated with in-house data centers can be enormous, internal data centers offer the highest level of control.
If your organization is considering outsourcing the facilities disciplines, wholesale colocation offers a simple way to offload the “landlord” side of the data center without losing control of the systems.
It’s often best to outsource data center facilities when you’re great at IT but not so great at building data centers.
Midwest colocation facilities like Lifeline Data Centers offer F5 tornado resistant buildings,N+N power and cooling redundancy, and access to many telecom providers. Midwest data centers offer low power costs also give you peace of mind that you’ve done the best job at solving the data center downtime problem using an affordable colocation solution.
Are you trying to be an expert in both facilities and IT? Talk it over with the mission critical facilities experts.
99.995% uptime and affordable colocation are not mutually exclusive. Many companies that visit our data center are surprised to learn that they can have high reliability without the huge capital costs of building a tier IV data center.
Most companies who need new high uptime data center space compare the costs of building their own primary data center in a company building versus using wholesale colocation facilities, aka outsource data centers.
So what does high uptime mean? Uptime is the measured value in minutes of a company’s computer systems reliability. 99.995% uptime means 28 minutes of downtime per year or less. Companies who value uptime know that downtime causes lost sales, lost profits, and lost clients. These companies haveoften learned about the costs of data center downtime the hard way. Some unlikely circumstance caused an outage that was painful enough for leadership to reevaluate the importance of the server room to the success of the company.
But the cost of uptime is high. A small in-house data center with 99.995% uptime can easily reach $1 million in capital costs, and tens of thousands in staffing, yearly maintenance, SAS 70 and SSAE 16 data center certifications.
What does affordable mean? Here are three characteristics:
Simple data center pricing model – Can you understand how the pricing works? Are there multiple add-on charges and mysterious extra monthly fees?
Predictable – Predictable pricing models make it easy to forecast growth and change. How complex is a three year analysis of your costs? Are there multiple variable costs?
Incremental- Incremental means pay as you use it. Can you grow the number of racks and pay accordingly? Do you pay for electricity as you use it, or based on the circuit size?
The good news: you can have your cake and eat it too. You can meet tier IV data center uptime requirements and still keep data center outsource costs low. The bad news: there are only a few Midwest colocation facilities that offer high data center uptime at affordable pricing. Do your homework and you’ll find flexible affordable colocation with high data center uptime.
PC World — On Monday, we polled IT and business leaders about how they’re using public and private clouds. The respondents to our pair of suveys who say they are well on the way to a completely virtual data center outnumber those who haven’t started using the cloud at all.
Nearly one-quarter of respondents to each of our two polls–one for IT managers and another for business managers–said they’re on the way to a virtualized data center. Only 17 percent of people who took either poll said they’re not using the cloud at all. The remainder have some sort of cloud initiative in place, either public or private.
Based on these results, small businesses seem to be buying into the notion of the cloud, but taking extra precautions against data loss. A spring survey by In-Stat shows that even when SMBs are buying cloud storage, they are also buying NAS systems for internal use to back up the online storage.
More of the CIO.com article from Logan G Harbaugh
Is your organization considering Chicago disaster recovery data centers? Chicago colocation and disaster recovery providers offer many options. Are these best for your organization?
Many factors play in to the selection secondary data center and office space locations. A good CIO strategy includes multiple geographies in an evaluation of disaster recovery centers. For some organizations Midwest colocation outside of Chicago might be a better solution.
Standard features that many organizations look for when considering disaster recovery centers include:
Hardened data center facilities – With Midwest colocation, F5 tornado resistant data centers building are important, along with earthquake resistant facilities in some areas.
99.995% uptime or better – This is the uptime level expected from Tier IV data centers. Some IT professionals consider the uptime is a DR center to be less important than in the primary data center. If your organization is doing real-time or near-real time data replication, data center uptime in your disaster recovery center is likely as important as in your primary enterprise data center.
Multiple carriers with no cross-connect fees – Access to multiple telecom carriers ensures diverse and reliable connectivity in the event of a disaster, or on an ongoing basis with real-time replication. Data centers with no monthly cross connect fees significantly reduce ongoing costs.
Data center compliance and certification – Compliance and certifications in the disaster recovery center are just as important as the primary data center.
Data center pricing model – Simple is better. Most organizations seem to prefer to pay for power, cooling and space incrementally as they use it.
Advantages to Midwest data centers located outside of Chicago include:
- Geographic diversity, especially for Chicago-based organizations.
- Overall lower costs, including, lower data center power costs, lower costs of construction labor, and lower data center capital costs.
- A theoretically lower risk from placing the disaster recovery center outside of one of the USA’s five largest cities.
Wholesale colocation providers offer the most flexibility for organizations that prefer to own and control their own telecom connections, network, servers and storage. Some wholesale data centers offer disaster recovery office space. This space can be custom fit by the organization to use for emergency call centers or workspace recovery.
Considering disaster recovery options in Chicago? Consider Midwest colocation providers outside of Chicago in your search.
Your high-tech landlord – Is affordable colocation your company’s most important real estate?
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.
Your business is moving. Are you taking your data center with you? Are you going to spend the money on generators, UPS systems, and air conditioning in order to build a new computer room at your new location?
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.
Why might Midwest colocation may be your best choice?
- Low data center power costs
- Low costs of construction
- Great access from the rest of the country
Why might Indianapolis be your best choice for your colocation provider?
- Dense concentration of telecommunications fiber
- Low data center power costs
- Strong pool of talented information technology professionals from Purdue, IU and Rose-Hulman
- Vibrant, easy to access technology community
Why might Lifeline Data Centers be your best choice for a Midwest data center provider?
- Ten years of history delivering affordable colocation with 99.995% uptime
- Privately held and owner-operated by veteran IT professionals
- Fifteen carriers with no monthly cross-connect fees
- SAS 70, TIA 942, HIPAA, FISMA, NIST, PCI, FDA compliant
- N+N redundant architecture (equivalent to a Tier IV data center)- better design means less downtime
- Private cages or shared space
- Secure office space on a 41 acre campus
- 10,000 square feet available
Want to know more? Call Lifeline at 317.423.2591
Affordable colocation, data center compliance and 99.995% uptime are not mutually exclusive
2010
Affordable colocation, data center compliance and 99.995% uptime are not mutually exclusive.
Many organizations will need to make significant changes to their enterprise data center in the next few years. These changes are driven by a number of factors:
- Limits on data center power, data center cooling, and floor space at the in-house data center
- Government regulations, more data center certification and data center compliance requirements
- Higher data center uptime requirements: expectations of your systems uptime is higher than ever
- Server and storage virtualization: the purchase of new power-hungry servers and storage area networks
- Business continuity and disaster recovery projects that include additional data center space off-site
- The availability of cheaper bandwidth and transport and the potential for significant cost savings
These ongoing changes to the data center and your client expectations are driving more businesses to consider wholesale colocation, a specific type of outsource data center facility. Companies are using wholesale data centers in three broad ways:
- As a primary data center environment where the most critical applications reside
- As a disaster recovery center or secondary site for SAN, data replication, and other business continuity applications
- As the center of a wide area network. Note, this is beneficial only if provider is a carrier neutral data center with plenty of telecom providers and no cross-connect fees.
IT organizations that “do the math” often discover that renting space in a wholesale data center can result in significant costs savings and an improvement in data center uptime. It’s because “building your own” can be cost-prohibitive when you consider the data center capital costs of dual power feeds, dual generators, dual power conditioning systems, and redundant data center cooling systems.
But in order to achieve the highest reliability and the most cost savings, you must be selective with your wholesale data center provider. Here’s a list of questions to ask:
- Are your facilities hardened data centers, or in the Midwest, F5 tornado resistant data centers?
- Do you offer rack space or private cages?
- Is your data center pricing model easy to understand?
- How do you bill for power: do I pay based on usage or based on circuit size?
- How do you bill for rack space usage: do I pay as I grow?
- Are you SAS 70 Type II certified?
- How do you handle data center compliance and audits?
- Do you have multiple locations?
- Are you a carrier neutral data center?
- How many telecom providers are available?
- Do you charge monthly cross-connect fees for the privilege of staying connected to the carriers?
- What IT services are available, and how are they billed?
- Are you publicly or privately held?
- Are the owners involved in day-to-day operations?
- Are you growing?
- What are you doing to keep power costs down?
- Do you have staging and office space?
- Who are your other clients?
The good news is: affordable colocation, data center compliance, and 99.995% uptime (which is the expectation for a Tier IV data center) are NOT mutually exclusive. Lifeline Data Center provides wholesale colocation in a carrier neutral data center with no cross connect fees. For more information, call me at Lifeline, 317.423.2591 or fill out the form below.
Data center certifications are driving more companies to outsource data centers.
Federal, state and local requirements on a company’s data center are on the increase. Companies that store personal data on their clients and employees have to spend more time, money and resources on keeping that personal data safe. Requirements include multiple levels of physical security, such as physical separation, PINs and other personal ID-based access, and detailed audit trails. Maintaining data center compliance can cost a medium size company hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
What are the data center certifications that matter?
Uptime Institute’s tier IV (the best) data center rating is a measure of the reliability (uptime) of a data center. Many industry people talk about data centers in terms of the four tiers that Uptime Institute defined, although few facilities spend the money to get the actual Uptime Institute data center certification. How a data center is designed, built and maintained to meet N+N redundancy and concurrent maintainability is what really matters.
SAS 70 data centers are certified to have defined “controls”, or operational procedures for the data center. SAS 70 Type II data centers are independently certified to adhere to these controls that they define. Although SAS 70 has become a requirement in many modern data center projects, the value of a SAS 70 data center certification lies in the quality of the controls that the data center operator defines.
TIA 942 compliant data centers follow the Telecom Industry Associations definitions of a data center. This certification is more detailed than the tier IV data center rating. Lifeline Data Centers builds our facilities to the TIA 942 compliant data center standard because of the granularity of detail in the standard.
Data center compliance refers to the different industry regulations that are placed on a company’s systems and data. We regularly assist our clients in FDA, HIPAA, FISMA, NIST, and Sarbanes Oxley audits. These regulations are increasing by the year; your choice of outsource data center can make a huge difference in your ability to maintain compliance in a cost-effective manner.
Companies outsource the data center to help with certifications and compliance. These companies can leverage the certifications and compliance that the outsource computer room provider maintains. They can reduce the time, money and other resources they must spend on data center compliance and certification.
What data center certifications do you need to meet in order to satisfy the government? What standards are your clients and vendors requiring in order to do business with them? Is your industry changing? Call Lifeline Data Centers at 317.423.2591 to learn more about how to reduce your data center compliance burden.
