The answer is yes for many companies. Data center outages can mean lost revenues, lost profits, and lost clients. These outages, also known as data center downtime, can disrupt the way service companies deliver their services. Outages can stop a manufacturer from outputting finished product. Downtime means that e-commerce businesses can’t sell goods.

Managing data center uptime is a game of risk management. And the cost of data center downtime for your business is the key factor to determine what you should do. If the cost of downtime is high, it makes sense to employ multiple measures to reduce risks of downtime. Even if the cost of downtime is low, you need to give consideration to the risks of an extended outage, and what you might do to protect the business.

One of the easiest ways to reduce the risk of downtime is to use wholesale data center facilities for your primary computer room. Wholesale data centers, also known as wholesale colocation and outsource data centers, provide hardened buildings, highly reliable power and cooling, and access to multiple telecommunications providers. Many companies have reduced power, cooling and telecom downtime to zero simply by moving into a wholesale data center.

How easy is it to move? It depends on the size and complexity of your primary data center. Technologies like virtualization and SAN have made it much easier. Moving to an outsource data center can be the last move your data center makes.

What about costs? As with most projects, there are ways to keep the costs down. Affordable colocation does exist. Look for owner-operated facilities with plenty of experience. These data centers tend to manage costs better than the large corporations. Midwest colocation provides low cost of power. Look for a simple data center pricing model that lets you pay as you grow. A few outsource data centers offer multiple telecom companies with no cross connect fees. All of these factors can significantly impact the affordability of outsource data centers.

Is your cost of downtime high? Does your business need better data center uptime? Talk to Midwest colocation provider Lifeline Data Centers 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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Just like previous years, we have included problems ranging from website outages and service issues to large-scale network interruptions. If you’re an avid Web user, you are bound to recognize several of them.

Let’s get started! The major incidents on the Internet in 2010 were…

Wikipedia’s failover fail

Wikipedia has become so ubiquitous that it can’t go down for a minute without people noticing. According to Google Trends for Websites, the site has roughly 50 million visitors per day.

In March, when servers in Wikimedia’s European data center overheated and shut down, the service was supposed to fail over to a US data center. Unfortunately, the failover mechanism didn’t work properly and broke the DNS lookups for all of Wikipedia. This effectively rendered the site unreachable worldwide. It took several hours before everyone could access the site again.

WordPress.com’s big-blog crash

WordPress.com got a pretty bad start this year when a network issue caused the biggest outage the service had seen in four years. The outage became extra noticeable not just because of the sheer number of blogs it hosts (at the time 10 million, now many more), but also because so many high-profile blogs use it. The WordPress.com outage took down blogs such as TechCrunch, GigaOM and the Wired blogs for almost two hours in February.

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Companies that are considering Lifeline Data Centers for their outsource data center needs often ask about our expertise with data center compliance. We are also asked about data our center certifications.

Rich Banta, co-owner of Lifeline Data Centers, holds the following certifications, which are from ISACA, the Information Systems Audit and Control Association.

CISA – Certified Information Systems Auditor. The CISA certification is known worldwide as the recognized achievement for those who control, monitor and assess an organization’s information technology and business systems.

CRISC – Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control. CRISC (pronounced “see-risk”) is designed for IT professionals who have hands-on experience with risk identification, assessment and evaluation; risk response; risk monitoring; IS control design and implementation; and IS control monitoring and maintenance.

Lifeline builds to the TIA 942 compliant data center standard. In our opinion, TIA 942 offers a more granular level of detail that the Uptime Institute Tier IV data center standard. Lifeline uses an N+N data center redundancy model which allows us to deliver 99.995% uptime or better. Lifeline has provided a zero downtime data center over the last five years.

Lifeline Data Centers is also a SAS 70 data center. Lifeline has a SAS 70 Type II certification.

Lifeline routinely passes HIPAA, FDA, FISMA, NIST, SOX, and PCI audits.

Need more info? Call Lifeline Data Centers at 317.423.2591.

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First, consider your strengths as a business. In what markets do you operate? How have you been successful? Where is your talent? What products and services net you the most profit? How does the IT organization and the enterprise data center support these strengths, both directly and indirectly?

Second, consider the regulatory compliance that the government, your clients, and your vendors expect from your business. Are you or your clients regulated by HIPAA, FISMA, NIST, Sarbanes Oxley, or the FDA? Do your vendors or clients expect SAS 70 data center certifications and TIA 942 compliant data centers? Is there a likelihood that the markets in which you operate will be regulated in the future?

Third, consider your uptime requirements. Tier IV data center facilities offer 99.995% uptime or better. That’s 28 minutes of downtime per year or less. If you ask your clients, they probably think a zero downtime data center is what you should provide. What are your organizational expectations for downtime due to data center facilities?

Fourth, consider your telecommunications needs. Do you need multiple carriers? Does the outsource data center charge monthly cross connect fees? Is the provider carrier neutral?

Finally, evaluate alternative vendors.

If your IT organization is well-aligned with the business, wholesale colocation makes sense. If you plan to own hardware and employ IT staff or IT service providers that you trust, wholesale colocation is a perfect fit.

Data center compliance and data center certifications vary among outsource computer room providers. Compliance issues are driving more companies to wholesale colocation facilities with data center regulatory compliance. Providers who carry data center certifications can further reduce the costs of compliance .

Uptime is a major differentiator when it comes to vendors. Data center power redundancy varies among providers. Two of everything (N+N data center redundancy) is the exception, not the rule. Make sure you clearly understand the data center power redundancy, data center cooling redundancy , and telecom infrastructure. If it looks like a single point of failure, it probably is. Hardened data center facilities are just as important, depending on your region and the associated risks. F5 tornado resistant data centers are critical for Midwest colocation facilities.

Data center pricing models vary. Make sure you understand how power, cooling and space allotments are billed. Watch for add-on fees, port charges, and other monthly mystery fees. Affordable colocation exists, and colocation pricing models can greatly affect long-term costs.

Carrier neutral data centers offer the most telecom flexibility. Carrier neutral data centers with no cross connect fees can reduce costs.

Lifeline Data Centers provides 99.995% uptime wholesale data center facilities to companies who need high uptime, flexibility and options. Lifeline is a carrier neutral data center with 15 providers and no monthly cross connect fees. Call Lifeline at 317.423.2591 to learn more about Lifeline’s wholesale colocation and office space solutions.

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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.

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At first blush, it would seem that uptime would hurt data center efficiency. Typically the more uptime a facility has, the more redundancy it has to build in to account for equipment failure. But that apparently is not as large a factor as other design elements.

“Tier level was not a huge predictor of energy performance,” said Alexandra Sullivan, an engineer in the EPA’s Energy Star program for commercial buildings. “When we looked at the data, we did not observe a significant relationship between tier and energy use.”

The data was collected between March 2008 and June 2009. For the study, Energy Star looked at more than 100 data centers to determine their energy efficiency. The agency is using the information to create an Energy Star standard for data center facilities, which will be released on June 7. The software will allow companies to rate their data center’s energy efficiency from 1 to 100, a scale similar to that for other commercial buildings.

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t’s been a rough couple of days for uptime at the world’s most popular sites. This morning YouTube was down for several hours, and Google has yet to issue an incident report. The downtime for the web’s leading video hub follows an outage yesterday for Wikipedia.

Many users visiting YouTube were greeted with an “Http/1.1 Service Unavailable” error message or a 500 Internal Server Error. Videos embedded in third-party sites apparently continued to work just fine. ”YouTube experienced a technical issue this morning,” YouTube reported, using its Twitter feed to state the obvious. “Our engineers worked to fix it and the site is back to normal.”

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The task was to upgrade a 25-year-old data center, built by AT&T during the 1980s to handle mainframe computing. The building was 125,000 square feet; the data center space, 80,000 square feet. In this case, modernization required ripping and replacing most of the facility’s power and cooling infrastructure — all without incurring system downtime.

Gale, the regional data center director for the Denver-based colocation company ViaWest, led the charge, and the process took 18 months.

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For those who don’t know about it, XKCD is a very popular online comic by Randall Munroe about geeky subjects like math, tech, and so on. If you’re not already a fan, check it out.

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