Archive for the ‘Wholesale data center’ Category
Are power and cooling limiting your data center?
I just read a great whitepaper by Eaton, the power products manufacturer, called “Is power your weakest link in data center flexibility?” The whitepaper talks about how higher densities and larger power footprints are causing companies to outgrow their data center power. Power is a limiting factor in data center growth.
Cooling is close behind, because for every 1 kW of power required to run IT equipment, about 1 kW of cooling is required to remove the heat.
Eaton’s modular power is a sensible approach to building an incremental power infrastructure in-house.
Colocation is a sensible alternative to eliminate the power and cooling problems. But all wholesale colocation providers are not created equal. The provider will need to allow room for growth, and provide usage based power billing. This approach providers for more granular, incremental growth in the costs of operating data center floor space, power and cooling.
Does wholesale colocation simplify data center management? Does outsourcing the facilities side of your data center make it easier to manage the data center?
Consider the what it takes for 99.995% uptime enterprise data center facilities management:
F5 tornado resistant data center building- for Midwest colocation
Full data center power redundancy – multiple power feeds, generators, UPS systems and rack feeds
Data center cooling redundancy – multiple, concurrently maintainable cooling systems
Physical security – two factor authentication and multiple layers of loggable physical security
Fire suppression – Reliable, industry standard systems with regular testing and maintenance
Data center compliance and certifications – from SAS 70 to SSAE 16, HIPAA, Sarbanes Oxley, FDA, FISMA and NIST certifications are just a few of the standards
Telecomm redundancy – Multiple telecommuncations feeds with separate entrances into the building
These requirements have nothing to do with Information Technology. They are facilities problems. If a colocation provider can take these requirements off your hands, you’re free to focus on data center management of your business, the applications that support it, and your underlying IT infrastructure.
Yes, wholesale colocation providers can simplify data center management. And if you’re selective, you can use the colocation provider to engineer higher data center uptime levels. Look for a wholesale colocation provider that delivers hardened data centers, N+N data center redundancy, multiple carriers, no cross connect fees, and 99.995% uptime. Power billing based on utilization is key. And don’t forget to shop for low data center power costs.
Wholesale colocation lets you stop worrying about data center facilities management.
Social media and Web 2.0 companies take advantage of available wholesale data center space, especially in Chicago and Santa Clara, Calif.
Zynga, the online game provider that recently went public, and Twitter were the two largest leasers of wholesale data center space during 2011, according to the Grub & Ellis National Data Center Practice year-end report.
Grub & Ellis is a broker of wholesale data center space, connecting tenants with builders such as CoreSite, DuPont Fabros, and Digital Realty Trust. There are several specialized brokers of such space. A wholesale data center builder produces a secure and efficient data center building, often with more than one source of power, and then a broker finds tenants to lease the space.
Wholesale space is different from hosted or managed services because the tenants put their own equipment in it and run it themselves. Grub and Ellis’ year-end summary doesn’t cover all broker’s activities, only their own, but is representative of some wholesale data center trends.
More of the InformationWeek article from Charles Babcock
What were the major trends in the data center industry during 2011? We’ve identified 10 trends that had a significant impact on the sector. Here’s our list:
1. The Cloud = Business for the Data Center Industry
About once a week I still see goofy headlines asserting that cloud computing is bad news for data centers. The reality, which became crystal clear in 2011, is that the growth of cloud computing means big business for the data center industry. Virtual servers don’t magically float in the clouds. They all live in physical servers, inside data centers. Cloud technologies have driven demand for more efficient data center space that can support higher-density computing workloads. That trend manifests itself in many ways – a hardware refresh, or a data center retrofit, or outsourcing to a cloud specialist, or leasing colocation space or wholesale data center suites. Cloud growth at Rackspace means more leasing for DuPont Fabros, international expansion for Salesforce.com means more business for NTT, and Twitter’s need for impoved latency and redundancy means business for QTS. Not to mention that the data center providers who were most aggressive about moving into enterprise cloud, Terremark and Savvis, were both acquired this year. On virtually all fronts, 2011 was the year in which cloud computing moved from discussion to dollars, and the data center industry was a major beneficiary.
2. Modularity Goes Mainstream
Another technology that saw adoption shift gears was the modular data center. The trend was solidified by a steady stream of announcements of new projects and new customers – something that had been conspicuously absent during the first few years of containerized offerings. It wasn’t just the number of modules, either.
More of the Data Center Knowledge article from Rich Miller
Is your in-house data center nickel and diming you to death?
Is your internal data center expensive to operate? Forget what’s in the racks. I’m not talking about servers, networking equipment and storage. I’m talking about facilities: your raised floor, your security, your power, your cooling, your telecommunications infrastructure and your fire suppression. How expensive is it to maintain?
Operating a data center in-house is expensive. Real estate floor space costs, raised flooring, reliable air conditioning systems, specialized security and fire protection all drive up the data center capital costs. Small data centers can easily exceed $1 million in capital up front.
Data center power and cooling redundancy is expensive. Multiple UPS systems are fairly common. Dual generators are rare. Rarer still are in-house data centers have two utility feeds. Data center capital costs are high, but the costs of maintaining and operating generators and UPS systems are high as well. N+N data center redundancy (two of everything) is prohibitively expensive for many organizations. You can’t deliver high uptime without power and cooling redundancy, yet uptime requirements continue to rise.
Staffing is expensive. Do you dedicate half an FTE or more to the maintenance of the data center?
Data center compliance and certifications are expensive. SAS70 (Now SSAE 16) data center certification audits start at about $20,000. Other certifications like the Uptime Institute’s Tier IV data center certification can cost more.
Not only are the data center capital and operating costs high, they’re also unpredictable.
How do you control costs?
Wholesale colocation offers an interesting solution. Wholesale data center providers build and operate high-tech real estate. Here are a few of the reasons that organizations choose to outsource the data center facilities.
You can rent the space you need in these giant data centers.
You can still have full control of your IT equipment and telecom infrastructure.
You can benefit from N+N data center redundancy in power, cooling, and telecom to improve uptime.
In a select few outsourced hardened data centers, you can protect your mission critical systems from F5 tornadoes and other regional risks.
Some Midwest colocation providers offer you access to multiple telecommunications providers with no cross connect fees. You can build telecom hubs to better manage the money spent on telecommunications.
You can trade capital costs for operating costs.
You can build a highly predictable cost model that allows for growth and change.
Sick of getting nickel and dimed to death? Call the outsourced data center experts.
Information Technology is complex. And though solutions like virtualization, storage and networking technologies give businesses a strategic advantage, IT is still difficult and labor intensive to run in-house.
But it’s not the case with wholesale colocation. Colocation providers (in English: high tech landlords) deliver hardened data centers, redundant power, cooling, fire suppression, security, and access to telecom. All the complexities of 99.995% uptime are handled by experts.
You can always build your own data center. If you have mission critical facilities experts on staff, you can probably build a nice one. But can you spend the capital costs on two of everything? How does the cost compare to wholesale data center space?
Getting out of the data center facilities business can simplify your IT.
If you believe simpler is better, talk to Lifeline Data Centers for your enterprise data center and your disaster recovery colocation.
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.
Should your outsourced data center (colocation) provider also be your IT services provider?
Your purchasing department would probably say yes. Your legal department might too. One throat to choke. They’re looking at the problem from a vendor management perspective, and fewer vendors is better. Or is it?
Ask yourself these questions:
What if you love the data center facility but the quality of the IT services offered are marginal?
What if you already have vendors for specific IT services?
What if you prefer to choose best of breed vendors for specific projects and technical support?
What if your staff does most of the IT work?
Would it be more sensible to separate the choice of data center provider from the choice of IT services provider?
Most companies that choose wholesale data centers over self-built data centers make the decision based on the uptime they get per dollar spent. That’s because these pure data centers, also known as wholesale colocation, concentrate on one thing: mission critical facilities. 99.995% uptime requires incredible attention to detail with hardened data center buildings, redundant power, cooling, telecom access, and data center regulatory compliance. But not all colocation providers are alike; data center reliability varies greatly based on the companies power, cooling, telecom systems, and compliance. If data center uptime is important, then the sensible approach would be to pick the best-designed facility for your needs.
Does it make sense to reject the best-fit data center facilities provider because they don’t do router work, or AS/400 support, or eCommerce platform support? The answer could be yes. It depends on your organization’s applications and your own staff’s talent in supporting these business-specific applications and their platforms. When considering full-service providers, make sure that you understand the quality of the data center behind the provider’s services. You have the option to pick your own wholesale colocation facility and require your vendors to support the hardware in your colocation space.
If you’re purchasing rack space from a full-service provider, you may be paying too much for your colocation space. Especially if your provider maintains a large staff of IT Support Engineers. Bench time is expensive, and unless these Engineers are fully utilized, your rack space pays for part of the Engineers’ wages. Make sure you consider competitive pricing from other colocation facilities. Data center pricing models are excellent indicators of what vendors value and how they handle their overhead.
Your outsource data center provider does not have to be your IT services provider. You have options. You can choose the best among data center vendors with a little homework.
Many wholesale colocation providers offer customers access to multiple telecommunications providers inside their data centers. Many offer a carrier neutral data center, meaning that there are no financial penalties or incentives associated with selecting particular carriers. Most customers appreciate access to multiple carriers; it gives them the chance to shop each of their connections among multiple carriers and determine the best price/value combination for their needs.
Cross-connect fees are monthly charges associated with these connections, billed to the customer by the outsource data center provider. There is usually one charge for each connection to the telecom carriers. These charges vary by data center provider. Sometimes the cross connect charges are based on the type of connection (fiber or copper), sometimes they are based on the size of the circuit, and sometimes they are just flat fees. These monthly fees can add up, especially when a customer has many connections to the Internet, remote branch offices, clients, and/or vendors.
A few wholesale data centers offer multiple carriers in a carrier neutral data center with no cross connect fees. For customers with multiple telecom connections, this cross-connect fee avoidance can mean big savings. Customers can move the hub of the network to these no cross-connect fee data centers and build a flexible, resilient network with no financial restrictions on the number of carriers they choose to employ.
Customers with a single telecom carrier can still save money. In Midwest data centers, monthly cross-connect fees average in the $50-200 per month range, so there is still financial benefit.
Looking for a wholesale colocation provide with no cross connect fees? Look here.
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.
