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.

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.

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

For a small business in Indianapolis with:

• one rack of server equipment
• 2 UPS systems
• router
• firewall
• 2 switches
• 30 workstations
• 10 printers

electrical usage is roughly 9 KW/hr. Cooling is another 18 KW/hr for a total of $1167 per month. Approximately $525 per month is for the servers and communications equipment.

Compare this pricing to an outsource data center: $850 per rack per month plus the cost of a telecommuncations circuit. Affordable colocation is a reality. By using an outsourcer’s hardened data center, your are protecting your systems from critical downtime. If the provider offers tier IV data center facilities, you’ll also be improving uptime via redundant power and cooling systems.

The idea of using a Midwest colocation provider may be the right choice for your business. Outsource data center facilities offer the advantage of large data center facilities at affordable prices for small business. Looking for a provider? Give Lifeline Data Centers a call at 317.4523.2591.

The new metric complements the Uptime Institute’s existing data center tier standard. And while some data center professionals welcome the new metrics, others may be too entrenched in their ways to adjust to change.

Developed more than 10 years ago, the tier metric was developed to rate the availability of data center facility design: the sticks and bricks of a facility itself. The new Operational Sustainability benchmark, on the other hand, measures a data center’s staffing, processes and place.

New metrics fill a gap
Many data center professionals have identified a real need for such metrics.

More of the SearchDataCenter article from Matt Stansberry

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.

Organizations that have a high cost of downtime try to reach the goal of a zero downtime data center. These organizations minimize downtime by employing tier IV data center facilities, or facilities built using tier IV guidelines. Design considerations include:

-N+1 or N+N data center redundancy including multiple power feeds, generators, and UPS systems
-Other data center redundancy including dual telecom entrances and multiple HVAC systems
-Hardened data center facilities, designed to withstand regional disasters.

If the risk of tornado or earthquake is high, and the cost of downtime is also high, why would you put your mission critical facilities in anything but a hardened data center? If you use outsource data center facilities, watch out for steel deck roofs and office buildings converted to data centers. Concrete walls are fine, but if the steel deck roof peels off in a tornado, your systems are at risk.

Lifeline Data Center uses only concrete reinforced buildings. If you’re interested in 99.995% uptime SLAs with NO downtime in the last five years, call Lifeline at 317.423.2591.

How does this happen? Many outsource data centers sell private label bandwidth and point-to-point circuits. If these contracts are purchased over time, there is no single contract termination date and it becomes costly to move and maintain these redundant contracts.

How can you avoid it? Choose a carrier neutral data center with no cross-connect fees, so you can purchase circuits directly from the carriers and avoid any monthly add-on fees.

Your outsource computer room provider should earn your business. If they’re not giving you the features that you need, i.e. 99.995% uptime (equal to tier IV data centers), hardened data center facilities, data center certifications and affordable colocation, you have alternatives. If you’re looking for a great solution, give Lifeline Data Centers a call at 317.423.2591.

Infrastructure as a service was a good solution at startup, but became too expensive to use as the client grew and needed more resources.

The cost of downtime is high and the clients have experienced data center downtime with their current outsource data center or cloud computing provider.

Data center certifications and data center compliance were difficult or impossible to evaluate/audit in a cloud-based environment.

Clients experienced performance issues that were difficult or impossible to isolate in a fully-hosted, cloud- based environment.

Clients do the math and determine that leasing/buying hardware and placing it in a facility with a sensible data center pricing model is a less expensive alternative.

Clients have had some costly downtime pain and want to take back control of their environments to guarantee that they have hardware, software and data center redundancy where it counts.

Clients realize that what they really need is a hybrid model that includes both outsource data center space and infrastructure as a service/software as a service.

Why are they choosing Lifeline Data Centers over other providers for their outsource computer room space?

Flexibility – clients can buy shared space or private cages, and can purchase extra space for growth without paying a penalty.

Uptime – Lifeline provides 99.995% uptime, the same levels as Uptime Institute certified tier IV data center facilities. And Lifeline’s hardened data centers are F5 tornado resistant.

Data center pricing model – Lifeline has a simple pricing model that separates floor space, per rack charges and power utilization. This appeals to clients who need incremental growth and easy forecasting of future costs.

Carrier neutral data center with no cross connect fees – Lifeline offers access to 15 carriers with no monthly cross-connect fees. Many clients find that the cross-connect fee savings can pay for their outsource data center space.

Data center power costs – Lifeline’s two Midwest colocation facilities deliver low power costs and pay-as you-use-it pricing.

Is outsource data center space a better alternative than infrastructure as a service? It depends, of course, on the nature of your business needs. For affordable colocation, call Lifeline Data Centers at 317.423.2591 to learn more about your best alternatives for outsource data center and cloud computing data center options to take advantage of the best of both worlds.

What stuff am I talking about?

• Data center power redundancy – dual utility power feeds, dual generators, and dual UPS systems for every cabinet of equipment in the data center.
• Data center cooling redundancy – dual cooling systems
• Hardened data center facilities – F5 tornado resistant buildings, engineered to withstand regional disasters
• Multiple telecommunications carriers – two or more choices for telecom circuits so you can pick the best carrier for your bandwidth and transport needs

You might be surprised at how rare it is, both in internal and outsource data centers, to have true N+N data center power redundancy. True power and cooling redundancy in the data center provides for 99.995% uptime (27 minutes of downtime per year or less). That is the same level of uptime as a tier IV data center. That’s because N+N data center redundancy (also known as 2N redundancy) allows for failures of equipment and for concurrent maintainability with no data center down time.

Why can’t you build these features into your data center? Or why won’t you? Data center capital costs are the number one reason. Generators cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. A second utility power feed into a facility can easily cost a quarter of a million dollars. Will the CFO sign off on such large capital expenditures when he knows your company can rent better facilities for less money?

Lifeline Data Centers provides affordable colocation facilities to keep uptime high and costs under control. And Lifeline is a carrier neutral data center with no cross connect fees. Need data center? Call Lifeline at 317.423.2591.