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Data Center Asset Management

September 8th, 2010

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Data center asset management is a critical yet often neglected task. There are all of those boxes, serial numbers and software versions to track and organize. Who has the time or energy?

Yet failing to coordinate and control data center assets inevitably erodes efficiency and performance. Without proper management, hardware and software product lifecycles gradually fall out of sync, important fixes and updates are missed and equipment losses and thefts may go unnoticed for days, weeks or even months.

Besides ensuring operational performance and efficiency, a data center asset management strategy will also enable you to streamline inventory processes to comply with legal and financial auditing and reporting requirements, enhancing your ability to comply with government and accounting mandates.

Fortunately, creating and sticking to a comprehensive asset management plan isn’t at all difficult. The process is certainly much easier than coping with the chaos created by an unorganized data center. Here are some suggestions to help you get you started:

Start With Your Inventory. Too many data centers are haphazardly organized. Assets come and go and their roles are never adequately catalogued or defined. This oversight can lead to gaps in key systems and processes as well as the possibility of multiple assets handling identical tasks. If you haven’t already done so, your first step toward developing an assert management strategy should be to create a detailed inventory of your data center’s assets.

Consider Software. Besides being a data center asset, software can also help you develop and maintain an effective management blueprint and strategy. Various vendors offer data center asset management tools. Take a close at the different offerings and find the one that mostly matches your needs. Data center management software can also help you increase inventory accuracy while reducing the time and manpower needed to create inventory and audit processes.

Don’t Overlook Facility Assets. Data center floor plans, rack space and cabinets are some of your easily overlooked “invisible assets.” Make sure that you’ve identified and configured these items to meet your exact needs. Your data center facility operator can help you design and organize an efficient and productive infrastructure.

Network Service is an Asset, Too. You can’t touch it or even see it, but network service is one of your data center’s most important assets. Yet network service can also be a pain to manage, since their are so many different technical and financial attributes to set and monitor. That’s why it’s always a good idea to locate your data center with a facility provider that offers built-in network connections and streamlines the network service procurement process by giving you access to multiple carriers via a single contract.

Remember Your Support Assets. Power and cooling services may not be assets in the conventional sense of the term, but they are certainly vital to data center operation and performance. The easiest and most efficient way of supervising these assets is to locate your data center in a facility that folds managed support services into your overall data center package.

Hold on to What You Have. While an asset management system can monitor losses, it can’t prevent them. To keep your assets safe, base your data center in a facility that offers state of the art physical access controls.

Don’t Get Lost in the Details. Be careful not to cross the line that divides a comprehensive asset management system from inventory fanaticism. In other words, it’s not necessary to inventory and track every nut and bolt in your data center. Organize smaller assets like cables and physical tools into easy to manage larger groups. Set a minimize value threshold (e.g. $1 or $10) for the items you track.

Getting the Upper Hand on Server Consolidation

August 30th, 2010

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Virtualization leads to server consolidation and cost savings. At least that’s how the process is supposed to play out. But anticipated financial and operational benefits can quickly vanish when server consolidation plans go awry.

To gain the upper hand on server consolidation, and ensure that your virtualization strategy reaches its maximum potential, pay attention to these details:

Create a detailed plan. Careful planning is the key to successful server consolidation. Identify, in writing, the project’s performance, size, cost and performance goals. Create a detailed schedule with specific benchmarks for key events. Build bridges with key management players to ensure adequate buy-in and support.

Look toward future needs. Your consolidated server environment will function as your data center’s foundation for many years, so you need to look forward as you develop your strategy. Examine current business and technology trends to estimate your server needs. Also think about your data center’s location. To achieve maximum cost and operational efficiency, you need to place your infrastructure in a setting that will allow you to cost effectively scale your physical server pool in step with financial and technological changes.

Build in resource redundancy. Fewer physical servers means a greater reliance on power, cooling, security and other vital support systems. Since losing even one machine can seriously impact data center operations, make sure that your physical environment is supported by resilient, continuously available and efficient support resources.

Set a reasonable physical-to-virtual consolidation ratio. Many managers launch consolidation projects with unreasonable expectations and a whole lot of wishful thinking. Set aside vendor claims and create your own physical-to-virtual consolidation ratio. Whether you calculate this figure this yourself or pay a consultant to create an estimate, an accurate ratio will prevent you from buying too many physical servers or deploying a server environment that’s insufficient for your ongoing needs.

Understand the technology. Many enterprises approach server virtualization—and consolidation—without fully understanding the underlying technology. Before launching your project, take some time to analyze various virtualization approaches and their effect on server consolidation. Also take a close look at your existing data center and analyze its long-term ability to support a virtualized environment. You may discover that it makes more sense, in both financial and operational terms, to relocate a smaller virtualized data center to a remote location and reallocate the old on-site space to another business activity.

Strive to standardize. Consolidation works best and most efficiently when servers are working within a compatible and standardized environment. This means using identical—or at least highly similar—server hardware configurations, hypervisors and support resources. This means you may have to eliminate some “oddball” servers as you consolidate your base. A technology that operates outside of your data center’s existing standards sphere should only be adopted if it delivers some type of immediate meaningful benefit, or if the technology promises to provide a new standards platform that you will be able to base other systems on.

Synchronize your strategy. An easy way to drive up consolidation costs—and trim benefits—is by failing to coordinate a virtualization project with existing server refreshment cycles. Moving a virtualization/consolidation timetable forward or backward by only a few weeks or months can often create significant savings.

Watch for warning signs. virtualization projects don’t generally run into trouble without first emitting a string of warning signs. Periodically check error logs and other system-generated alerts for indications that your consolidated servers aren’t working smoothly. Remember that little, almost unnoticeable problems have a way of snowballing, gradually driving down data center performance.

Do You Need Multiple Data Centers?

August 23rd, 2010

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Is two always better than one? Is four guaranteed to be an improvement over two? Quite possibly, if the topic being discussed is data centers.

As data centers internally consolidate and become increasingly efficient, a growing number of enterprises are considering the idea of operating multiple facilities. There’s a strong case to be made for data center decentralization: the concept of dispersing and/or duplicating IT and networking resources on a regional, national or even global basis. Multiple data centers can benefit enterprises in several different ways, including enhanced productivity, scalability and redundancy, not to mention cost savings.

Not convinced that having multiple data centers is a good idea? Then consider these points.

Cost savings. Businesses located in areas with sky-high real estate and energy costs, such as California and New York, can off-load operations to a satellite data center in a far less expensive place, such as Arizona, to save significant amounts of money. Virtualization can make multiple data centers appear, and function, as a single entity, making management a snap. Meanwhile, an automated secondary facility can also help IT managers trim payroll costs.

Enhanced scalability. Spreading servers and related equipment across multiple sites makes it easier to raise and lower computing capacity. Enterprises can open, close and scale remote facilities in lockstep with current business requirements. This approach is far more cost-effective than expanding an existing on-site facility, which can’t be easily shrunk if future business or technology needs (such as virtualization) dictate.

A place to experiment. Satellite sites provide a perfect test bed for experimenting with potentially useful types of new equipment, software and services. A remote data center gives IT staff members the ability to evaluate promising new technologies under actual business conditions without the risk of unintentionally damaging vital operations at the main data center.

Uninterrupted productivity. Data center operations often falter during server replacement operations or whenever the facility’s physical infrastructure is being enhanced or remodeled. During periods of upheaval at the main data center, a secondary facility can step in to provide much needed computing support that will keep operations humming along.

Business continuity insurance. In a perfect world, enterprises could confidently place all of their IT eggs into a single data center basket and never have to worry about the consequences. But in the real world, where fires, storms, earthquakes and other catastrophes are all too commonplace, a secondary data center allows operations to continue even if the main facility is disabled for an extended period. Fortunately, you don’t have to spend gobs of money to build a fully-staffed duplicate facility. Many organizations have discovered that even a small colocated equipment cabinet is sufficient to keep critical operations running along at an acceptable, if not optimal, level during an emergency.

Mission-critical data support. It doesn’t take a full-blown disaster to obliterate mission-critical data. Routine sever and storage system failures, as well as human error, are responsible for more lost data than all disasters combined. Automatically duplicating critical documents, such as contracts and emails, at a remote facility provides absolute data redundancy without exposing the information to an external party.

Remote data archives. Some organizations, such as law firms, financial institutions and government agencies, prefer—or are required—to archive their data in a particular geographical location, which may many miles away from the main data center. While storage outsourcing is a possible solution, for convenience, security and privacy reasons many organizations prefer to manage and store critical information on equipment they own and operate.

Stronger security. If an enterprise’s on-site data center suffers a security meltdown, the facility can be quarantined and decontaminated while one or more remote facilities continue handling vital operations.

Solid-State Storage Meets the Data Center

August 16th, 2010

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Solid-state-storage is already found in USB memory sticks, smartphones, media players and a variety of other devices. Before long, you may also find solid-state drives (SSDs) performing key tasks inside your data center.

While hard drives aren’t yet ready to join the endangered species list, SSDs can help data centers keep pace with speedier servers and applications. Here’s what you need to know about this emerging data center technology:

What is Solid-State Storage? Also known as flash memory, solid-state storage is a non-volatile, removable storage medium that uses integrated circuits (ICs) rather than magnetic or optical media.

Why is It Needed? As server CPU speeds keep accelerating, hard drive access times are struggling—and increasingly failing—to keep pace. This bottleneck can be felt in a number of areas, including database and caching applications, particularly when they are offered as a service or hosted within a cloud computing environment. SSDs can bring speedier access times to data center storage systems that hard drive vendors and users can currently only dream of.

Enterprises may also want to adopt SSDs to take advantage of the technology’s other benefits, including low power consumption, low heat generation, non-volatility, enhanced reliability and compact form factor characteristics—all appealing attributes in a colocation or general data center environment.

How Much Does It Cost? This is perhaps the biggest question. It’s widely known that solid-state storage is far more expensive than magnetic storage technologies, although the price-gap is getting smaller over time. In-Stat, a semiconductor industry research firm based in Scottsdale, Ariz., reports that flash prices have dropped an average 60 percent per year over the past three years. Nevertheless, SSDs remain far more expensive than equivalent-capacity hard drives (and it’s important to remember that hard drive prices are falling dramatically, too). In a nutshell, the price per gigabyte ratio between SSDs and HDs currently stands at between 10:1 and 20:1, depending on device capacity and quality.

Who Offers It? Nearly all server vendors already offer SSDs in one or more of their systems, either as the primary storage device or as an add-on unit. Storage system vendors, meanwhile, are marketing various types of SSDs as direct replacements for existing server hard drives and for use in storage area networks (SANs). Some companies are also building SSD technology into data access appliances targeted at high-demand database customers. 

Who Will Benefit Most From the Technology? Basically, any enterprise that needs to run applications requiring high-speed data location and/or retrieval, including credit card transactions, video on demand and search engines.

When Will We Be Able to Get Rid of Our Hard Drives? Not at any point in the foreseeable future. In fact, data center hard disk eradication is a task your successor (or his or her successor) may face. In-Stat forecasts that by 2013 SSDs, will account for only 5.4 million of all enterprise mass storage device shipments (compared to 42.7 million hard drives). Interestingly, Gartner, the Stamford, Conn.-based technology research firm, sees cloud-based storage as a more serious and immediate threat to data center hard drives than solid-state storage.

Over the long haul, however, time and technology favors SSDs. In-Stat projects that SSD shipments will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 154.8 percent between the years 2007 and 2013 (as opposed to just 4.8 percent for hard drives). With such disparate growth rates, it appears highly likely that SSD deployments will likely one day catch up with and overtake hard drive installations.

Understanding Virtualization’s Limitations

August 9th, 2010

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Just about everybody agrees that server virtualization is a good idea, since the practice leads adopters to improved efficiency, increased availability and lower costs. But as enterprises large and small leap into the virtualization pool, some are doing so with unrealistic expectations, perhaps misled by over-enthusiastic colleagues and gushing news reports.

Whether you’re a virtualization pro, just beginning a virtualization project, upgrading an existing deployment or still sitting on the sidelines, it’s important to understand and stay within the technology’s boundaries to create a server environment that will meet your needs today and for years to come. To help you better understand virtualization’s real world applications, here are six popular myths about the technology debunked:

1. Virtualization eliminates service outages.  By “spreading the risk” among multiple machines, virtualization can help reduce the likelihood of a total outage. On the other hand, virtualized servers require more and stronger redundant services than their traditional counterparts, since the failure of even a single virtualized server is more likely to affect multiple applications and services than the collapse of a traditional server. Carefully consider this point when looking for a place to locate virtualized servers, paying particular attention to available power, cooling, network and security resources.

2. Virtualization can be deployed without a storage area network (SAN).While this may be technically true, it’s not necessarily a good idea. The applications and databases running on each virtualized physical server are likely to require more storage capacity than the machine’s hard drive can provide. In any case, running a virtualized environment without a SAN isn’t very efficient or cost-effective.

3. Virtualization significantly cuts security requirements.Actually, the opposite is true. To prevent threats to the entire server environment, access to virtualization software must be tightly controlled. Understand that it’s possible for someone with access to a virtual machine to download an application that launches an attack on the virtual “walls” that separate individual virtual machines.

4. Data centers that embrace virtualization need fewer staff members.Virtualization usually has little or no impact on staff size requirements. While the quantity of physical servers is reduced in a virtualized environment, the total number of machines (in virtual form) typically increases. Whether physical or virtual, servers need to be managed, monitored, updated, patched, troubleshooted and generally tended to, and that’s where most of the real work lies. Hardware-oriented service demands (like replacing a blown power supply) usually consumes only a small fraction of overall staff time.

5. Virtualization cuts software licensing costs.It seems obvious that server consolidation via virtualization would either stabilize or lower software licensing expenses. But this assumption fails to recognize the law of unintended consequences. With a seemingly unlimited number of virtual machines suddenly at their disposal, business managers begin asking for more computing resources for their departments. To cope with these requests, and given the fact that resource requests once granted are not easily revoked, many data center managers actually find themselves eventually adding more physical servers simply to keep pace with spiraling demands for virtual resources. Therefore, to stay on the safe side, make sure that your data center can support future server expansion.

6. Blade servers can be used successfully in a virtualized environment.Using blades in virtualization can be risky, since the approach requires placing multiple virtual eggs into a condensed server basket. If you decide to use blades (and there are some good reasons to do so), make sure that your installation is supported by adequate backup and redundancy services. Remember that the failure of a tightly-packed blade installation can result in the simultaneous loss of numerous applications and services.

Modular Data Centers: A Perfect Fit for Enterprise IT

August 3rd, 2010

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A growing number of enterprises are discovering that a modular data center is the perfect fit for their IT needs. A relatively new concept, modular data centers    give organizations a flexible, reliable and energy efficient way of deploying an always-on IT and network facility quickly and at an affordable price.

For enterprises that are still stuffing their critical IT systems into unconditioned, unsecured and unmonitored places, such as server and telecommunications closets or spare office spaces, a modular data center opens the door to secure and redundant IT and network services. The approach provides a ready-made solution for the various problems associated with improvised and poorly planned data centers, including overheating, insufficient or unprotected power resources, poor security and improper equipment installation.

Here’s why a modular platform may be the answer to your data center needs:

Rapid Deployment. Enterprises can procure and deploy a modular data center in a fraction of the time required to design and build a new data center or overhaul an existing data center.

Fully-Integrated. Next-generation modular data centers, like the i/o ANYWHERE™ platform, includes 100 percent of the critical infrastructure needed for an always-on data center, including compartmentalization, continuous cooling and concurrent maintainability, as well as primary and backup power generation, power conditioning, network connectivity and a management operating system that provides monitoring, alarming and remote control capabilities.

Scalability.  Thanks to its building-block design, a modular data center can easily scale along with your business, allowing extra data center capacity (i.e. power, cooling, network connectivity) to be deployed quickly. Since you never know where your business needs may take your data center, you should look for a modular platform that can easily scale to tens of megawatts of uninterruptible power and thousands of cabinets in a single deployment.

High-Density Computing. A scalable modular data center is designed to meet your growing IT infrastructure requirements. Look for a provider that can configure the platform for today’s high-density IT environments.

Geographic Flexibility. By taking a modular approach, your enterprise gets to decide the data center’s physical location without sacrificing any vital support and service resources. A modular data center can be deployed anywhere in the world and is not confined to a particular geography or terrain. Ideally, you should look for a platform that offers international plug & play capabilities. This will help to reduce in-market costs for setup and inspections.

Quality Design. While some initial market entrants supplied modular structures that were nothing more than repurposed shipping containers (a discomforting thought), a modern, high-quality modular data center is designed from the start to function as an enterprise-grade data center solution. A state of the art structure completely protects both equipment and data and is managed to a 100 percent uptime service level agreement.

Flexible Configuration. A scalable modular data center allows all basic components—including servers and cabinets—to be easily added as business and IT needs evolve. Make sure the modular platform you choose can accommodate large storage arrays and main frames. Many of the current containerized offerings force you to put your IT gear in their cabinets or event use their equipment.

Lower Costs. Thanks to interchangeable components and various pre-designed features, a modular data center typically costs significantly less to deploy and expand than its traditionally built counterpart. A faster time to deployment also allows enterprises to begin deriving financial benefits from their new data center much sooner.

Creating an Effective Data Backup Strategy

July 26th, 2010

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Your data center’s most valuable asset isn’t its servers, storage systems or any other physical components—it’s the data these systems handle.  To ensure that your data center never loses a single bit of information due to technical or environmental factors, it needs to have an effective strategy for efficiently backing up and recovering data.  Here are the main points you should consider.

Setting a Schedule.  At the most basic level, backups need to be properly configured with the proper settings and carried out consistently at predetermined times.  But many enterprises, such as banks and retailers, need more frequent—even continuous—backups.  Adding to the confusion is virtualization, which can make backup scheduling and coordination a nightmare.  To remove the pain, and to ensure that all information is safely archived, consider using some form of automated software or service to manage and time backups.  It’s an investment you won’t regret.

Select the Media.  Over the years, media selection has traditionally boiled down to a matter of tape versus disk—first floppy disks, now hard drives.  The debate over which approach works best still rages on, even as hard drives prices continue plummeting.  There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with either media, although each has its strong and weak points.  Tape generally wins on the basis of cost while disk offers the advantage of speedier recovery.  To determine which media will best fit your needs, balance the amount of money you have available against how often you need to recover data, then try to reach a sensible compromise between cost and time.

Consider Deduplication.  Removing useless, duplicate data can significantly shrink your organization’s backup storage requirements.  By minimizing storage footprint requirements, as well as network bandwidth consumption and backup windows, deduplication can boost data backup and recovery efficiency while lowering costs.  The approach also reduces data center power and cooling needs and makes disk backups a more financially attractive proposition.

Strive for Stability and Redundancy.  It’s all well and good to have a solid backup strategy, but you’ll also want to physically protect your data—and minimize the need for time-consuming recovery sessions caused by infrastructure damage—by ensuring that your facility isn’t vulnerable to natural and man-made disasters.  Your data center also needs to have backup technologies in place that will keep power, cooling, network services and other necessary resources flowing steadily and continuously.

Off-Site Backups.  A growing number of enterprises are taking advantage of low cost, high-speed networks to archive data at one or more remote locations (such as with a storage service provider or at a secondary enterprise data center).  If you decide to go this route, make sure that your data center is based at a facility operated by a carrier-neutral network services provider that features multi-homed network access.  A blended bandwidth approach will give you a highly reliable connection to the Internet and keep your mission-critical backup operations “always-on.”

Look to the Cloud.  Pay-as-you-go, scalable cloud storage is a way of using high-speed networks, combined with a cutting-edge technology, to slash data backup costs without sacrificing efficiency or protection.  While many enterprises opt to turn over all of their backup needs to a cloud-oriented service provider, others use a hybrid model that involves having premises infrastructure and in-house backup tools mixed with cloud storage.

Stay Up to Date.  Data backup needs and technologies evolve over time, so it’s a good idea to periodically revisit your data backup strategy—say every year or so—to ensure that the plan is continuing to meet your data center’s needs.

Selecting the Best Data Center Location

July 23rd, 2010

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You’re no doubt familiar with the famous real estate mantra, “Location, location, location.”  Well, what’s true for homes also applies to data centers.  Location plays a major role in data center cost and service, so when searching for a home for your IT systems you’ll want to carefully consider where the facility is located as well as what it has to offer.

In the past, businesses generally selected a data center facility that was located within reasonable traveling distance of their main business site.  But thanks to ongoing advances in data center automation and remote management, proximity isn’t as important a consideration as it used to be.  In fact, many organizations intentionally use a back up facility located in another city or state simply because it provides added insurance against a local disaster bringing operations to a standstill.  For those increasingly rare times when a switch needs to be physically flicked or a disc has to be swapped, look for a data center that offer free Remote Hands service.  Here’s what to look for:

  • Natural Environmental.  Most backup systems are only useful for a few days (at best).  Yet earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes, floods and other catastrophes can knock a data center out commission for weeks, or even months, as the local infrastructure collapses and is then gradually rebuilt.  So when selecting a data center, think about the facility’s exposure to destructive natural forces.

 

  • Local Environment.  Pricey real estate, high taxes and other unfriendly business conditions usually don’t have a big impact on data center services, yet these factors can drive costs through the roof.  Take this into consideration when evaluating data centers in different places.

 

  • Local Utilities.  Data centers rely on local utilities, particularly power companies, for essential services, so it’s important to check the quality and cost of local electric services before you commit to any particular facility.  Additionally, backup power systems notwithstanding, you probably don’t want to risk deploying your equipment in an area that experiences brownouts and blackouts each summer.

 

  • Carrier Proximity.  To maximize your communications options, as well as to ensure high reliability and performance, make sure that the data center offers close and direct proximity to a wide selection of top telecom carriers.

 

  • Skilled Employee Base.  The cheapest and safest place to build a data center is probably way out in the country, many miles away from expensive cities.  But a data center located in the middle of nowhere will have a tough time finding and connecting to the vital resources it needs, including the skilled people required to keep the facility running at peak efficiency.  Locating your data center in an average city with a nearby major university and an educated workforce can help you keep costs down without heading to the boondocks.

 

  • Physical Space.  If a data center is already bursting at the seams with no room for future expansion, it may not have space available for you when you’re ready to add new systems.

 

  • Construction.  How a data center is constructed is as important as its placement.  The best facilities are the ones that have been custom designed and tailored for data center use.  Also pay close attention to the building techniques and materials used.  Thick steel-reinforced concrete walls, an insulated roof to minimize heat gain and a tight, insulated building envelope will reduce cooling requirements, creating an energy efficient data center.  Energy efficiency leads to lower operating costs.

Disaster and the Data Center

July 19th, 2010

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How would you cope if your data center was severely damaged or even obliterated by a disaster?  It’s unsettling to think about the many threats that could potentially wipe out your organization’s IT resources.  Yet right now, as you’re reading this article, there are data centers struggling to recover from the devastation caused by fires, floods, explosions, wind, earthquakes and a variety of other natural and man-made threats.  The idea that your data center could one day find itself in the same position is hardly inconceivable.

The stakes are extraordinary high.  According to global insurance provider Axa, 80 percent of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) affected by a major incident either never re-open or close within 18 months.  Larger firms, meanwhile, stand to suffer serious, perhaps permanent, losses in revenue, customers and reputation. Fortunately, simply by planning ahead, you can ensure that your company’s IT systems will be able to stay online and play an active role in helping your business regroup and rebuild after a calamity.  Here’s how to get started:

Develop a Data Center Recovery Plan.  Most enterprises already have an organization-wide disaster recovery/business continuity plan. Yet such documents often fail to adequately describe the data center’s role in supporting business operations before, during and after a crisis.  That’s a major oversight, and the reason why data centers need their own disaster recovery/business continuity blueprint.  The document should include information on risk analysis, budgeting, testing, deployment and other crucial issues. 

Create a Backup Facility.  Unless your enterprise’s data center is already located at an efficient, secure and reliable off-site facility, it’s probably vulnerable to the same perils that threaten to damage or destroy your headquarters.  Most major businesses answer this challenge by creating a backup data center that’s prepared to go into action instantly on a fail-over basis.  The secondary site is usually located some distance away—typically in another county or state–from the primary facility.

Consolidate Your Data Center.  Many enterprises balk at the prospect of creating a backup data center, mostly due to the cost and trouble of duplicating key systems and synchronizing data.  Many businesses can successfully address this problem by moving their primary data center to an off-site facility and  then centralizing IT operations there.  If the organization selects a place that’s virtually immune to major natural calamities (such locations really do exist within the U.S.), and that features advanced fire control, access control and other protective measures, it will have taken a major step toward ensuring its ability to survive a major crisis.  The firm will also be able to take advantage of the cost and operational benefits that come with basing a data center in a facility that’s been specifically designed to enhance IT operations and to protect systems and their users from mundane interruptions, such as blackouts and network failures, as well as once-in-a-lifetime disasters.

Consider Virtualization.  Savvy businesses are turning to virtualization as a way of greatly reducing the cost of restoring IT activities in an emergency.  With virtualization, it’s possible to encapsulate an operating system, an application and its data into the equivalent of an application running on top of an operating system.  The encapsulated application can then be easily transmitted to an off-site location—just as one would transmit a data file—and made available on a remote machine for employees to access.  This capability can slash the length of downtime during a crisis from days to hours.  If your organization has already adopted virtualization, it’s ahead of the game in disaster recovery and other critical IT areas.  If not, you now have another reason for jumping onto the virtualization bandwagon.

How to Avoid Colocation Hidden Charges

July 8th, 2010

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Everybody loves a deal, including colocation customers.  But as with any type of too-good-to-be-true business proposition, a “bargain” colocation package can actually cost far more over time thanks to hidden charges.

How can you protect yourself from falling for a colocation contract that will eventually turn into a money pit? Consider these points:

Networks and carriers. The devil is in the details.  Look carefully at the number and types of networking services being offered.  Remember that if a provider is committed to only a single carrier, you stand to lose a considerable amount of connectivity bargaining power when negotiating network service terms. A multiple carrier environment creates a competitive environment that drives costs down.  Additionally, some carriers require a local loop fee, costing anywhere from $1,500 to $15,000.  Teaming up with a colocation provider that has each carrier’s equipment installed on-site means that the local loop fee could suddenly disappear, providing a potential huge cost savings.  Colocation customers in a multi-carrier environment also benefit from a blended solution of multiple fiber backbone providers.  A blended environment provides a highly reliable Internet connection and significantly reduces the potential for downtime.

Cross connects. A colocation customer should never have to pay extra for interconnection.  Monthly cross-connect charges are a major revenue source for most providers, so free cross connects creates a huge savings for customers—a benefit that multiplies over time.  Check the fine print to see how much you will be charged per cross connect, per month.  Quality colocation providers do not charge for cross connects and include a full range of commonly used cables, including single or multi-mode fiber, category 3, 5 or 6 twisted pair cable and 734/735 COAX with BNC connectors.

Remote Hands.  Remote Hands service is another area where some colocation providers try to squeeze extra money out of their customers.  Having to visit your colocation environment to simply flip a switch or to swap a disc is a great way of burning away time and money.  So walk away from any colocation deal that doesn’t include free Remote Hands service.

Cages.  If you decide to use a cage, make sure that it can be customized to meet your requirements rather than what the provider thinks you need.  A cage that’s inadequately sized, wastes space or promotes inefficiency represents a hidden cost.  For example, a customer may request a cage that can support 150kW of power, but receive a quote for a 400 square foot cage.  While the quote may seem lower than expected, the estimate would require a power density of 375 watts per square foot (a level most providers can’t achieve).  The alternative is for the provider to eventually sell the customer more space.  Therefore, it’s important to ensure that the provider can honestly accommodate your real-world power needs rather than simply trying to lure you into a small cage that only appears to be a bargain.

Redundancy and uptime. Many colocation providers oversubscribe their critical infrastructure.  You certainly won’t be saving any money if a vital support system suddenly fails—perhaps for an extended length of time.  Make sure the colocation provider has adequate backup power generation, UPS, chiller and air handling capacity to meet your needs and the needs of the provider’s other customers.  Expect a 100% Uptime SLA that has real service level objectives  – don’t just take the provider’s “best effort” at keeping your IT environment up and running 24×7.

Technology expertise and availability.  Look for a provider with a highly trained staff that’s available on a 24×7 schedule. Remember – a provider with years of experience will be able to operate more efficiently and cost effectively than a provider without the experience, creating customer savings.

Efficiency.  Is the provider doing all it can to cut energy and cooling costs, such as using variable frequency drives, ultrasonic humidification, sealed cabinets and LED lighting?  Does the provider have a peak-load shaving strategy to reduce energy consumption during the day when energy costs are typically higher? Lower energy bills translate into potential cost savings.

Geographic location. A provider’s physical location can have a major impact on what you will eventually pay.  Costly real estate, high business taxes and fees and expensive utility rates are all passed along to the customer.  In addition, some states may be at higher risk of natural or man-made threats, which could impact uptime.  A protracted period of downtime could end up costing you more than you expect, both in terms of lost revenue and business opportunities.

Don’t zing yourself.  Many colocation customers create their own hidden costs by installing inefficient, outdated, power hungry and unreliable equipment. Money invested in quality gear is rarely wasted.  Consider using virtualization and other efficiency-efficient technologies to drive down costs.

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