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

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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If your organization

• operates a private cloud
• delivers cloud services
• uses a combination of cloud and internal services

you may want to consider a wholesale data center as the center or hub of your cloud infrastructure.

Outsource data centers can deliver 99.995% uptime. That’s 28 minutes of data center downtime per year or less. You can leverage the data center power and cooling redundancy in an F5 tornado resistant data center without having to spend the capital costs to build your own.

You can maintain the control of your own servers, network and storage without worrying about hardened data center buildings, power, cooling, data center security, and fire suppression.

You can build a primary, secondary, or high-availability computer room that meets SAS 70 data center requirements along with other data center certifications and compliance, without having to use internal resources for compliance.

You can choose which telecommunications providers best suit your needs, in order to build a reliable, cost-effective wide area network.

You can leverage data center power costs by choosing Midwest colocation facilities with lower kilowatt hour costs .

Which wholesale data center is the right place to build your cloud computing data center? Consider these criteria:

• Is the outsource data center provider growing? Look for large, successful data center facilities with room to grow.
• Who owns the data center? Are the owners involved in the day-to-day operations?
• What’s the track record of the business? How long have they been building and operating data centers?
• What level of data center uptime is the provider offering? 99.995% uptime is the promised service level of a tier IV data center.
• Does the provider offer shared space, private cages or private suites? Can you bring your own cabinets? Do they offer optional office space? More options are better.
• What are your choices for telecommunications? If you need flexibility, you need a carrier neutral data center that offers access to many carriers. Look for facilities with no cross connect fees to keep monthly costs low.
• Look for a usage-based power pricing model with low per kilowatt hour pricing. Midwest data centers often have the best power pricing because of lower power costs in the region.
• Look for affordable colocation facilities can deliver 99.995% with a pay as you grow data center pricing model.

If you’d like to build more reliability and predictable costs into your data center, call Lifeline Data Centers at 317.423.2591.

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Some studies have shown that a little over half of commercial organizations will be faced with a change in their primary data center in the next five years.  These companies usually move because they are faced with a shortage of data center space, data center power or data center cooling. Some will be moving the data center because the headquarters is also moving   Are you considering moving your data center?.  If so, you are probably considering outsource computer room facilities as well as the alternative of building your own computer room.  Is there value in outsource data center facilities? Are outsource data center costs lower than building your own?

The answer is often 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 computer room.  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.

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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.

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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.

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• 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

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First, what are the benefits of reducing complexity?

• Less labor required for managing IT and the data center
• Better reliability; less data center downtime
• Faster time to resolution when problems arise
• Better focus on the business issues that IT supports, rather than equipment, facilities and compliance
• Removal of the barriers to growth and change in the business and in the IT that supports the business.

The complexity of your computer room is largely dependent on the level of computer system reliability that your company requires. This reliability is known as data center uptime. For this post, we’ll assume that your business requires 99.995% uptime, which is 28 minutes of downtime per year or less. This is the same level that Tier IV data centers promise to deliver. Why so high? Because data center downtime can mean lost revenues, lost profits, and lost clients.

How complex is your data center? There are three broad categories of complexity: information technology, facilities, and compliance.

The complexity of your information technology includes:

• Servers
• Storage
• Switches
• Firewalls
• Security appliances
• Monitoring devices
• Virtualization software
• Operatiing systems
• Business applications

The complexities of the information technology alone can be daunting. Since the business applications are what drives all the other information technology components, business applications will be the first factor in determining the level of complexity. More applications mean more complexity. Interdependence of applications means more complexity. Data interchange with clients and vendors adds complexity.

When high reliability (the goal of zero downtime data center downtime) is important, things get even more complex. High data center uptime requires dual power supplies on IT equipment, and duplicate equipment for the most important servers, storage units and network devices. This duplication is known as data center redundancy, and it requires more management, maintenance, capital and operating expense than a less reliable approach.

On the data center facilities side, the complexities include:

• Hardened data center buildings (F5 tornado resistant data centers in Midwest data centers)
• Data center power redundancy (two power feeds, two generators and two UPS systems supporting IT equipment
• Data center cooling redundancy
• Fire suppression
• Physical security

Again, higher data center uptime requires more complexity. N+N data center redundancy (two of everything) is the best way to minimize downtime. That means two utility feeds , two generators, two UPS systems and two power paths to all IT equipment . Two air conditioning systems reduces the risk of downtime due to cooling failures, one of the most common causes of downtime in computer rooms. Fire suppression for computer rooms needs to be different than standard fire protection. And physical security can be very complex to administer.

This N+N data center redundancy reduces downtime but greatly increases complexity and costs. Data center capital costs can easily reach $500,000 or more when building an in-house N+N redundant data center. The complexity of owning and managing a data center can be even more daunting that the complexities of the information technology in the data center.

On the compliance side, more regulations are coming as the government seeks to legislate privacy and security in certain industries. The most regulated industries are:

• Financial services
• Credit card handling
• Health care
• Utilities
• Government data
• Life sciences

But these industries are not the only ones requiring data center certifications and compliance. Clients and vendors are requiring SAS 70 certified data centers and TIA 942 compliant data centers. Obtaining certifications and meeting regulatory compliance requirements can add complexity, cost, and additional in-house labor burden.

How does a wholesale data center facility reduce the complexity? With the right wholesale data center, you can outsource the facilities and compliance complexities. Most companies don’t have in-house expertise in power, cooling, sturdy buildings, fire suppression and physical security. handing over these disciplines to data center professionals simplifies the data center and reduces complexity. Many companies are required to maintain levels of data center compliance and certification. The cost of a SAS 70 certification alone can range from $20,000 to $50,000 initially and $20,000 per bi-annual audit. Outsource data centers can also provide information technology support to assist or replace in-house staff.

What’s the benefit of outsource data center? Your IT staff can stop worrying about facilities and compliance problems, and focus on business applications and the information technology to support them.

Looking for a simple data center solution? Call Midwest colocation provider Lifeline Data Centers at 317.423.2591.

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