Data center redundancy: can you afford to be without it?

Can you build enough data center redundancy?  Most businesses today have little or no tolerance for downtime.  The cost of downtime is lost revenues, lost credibility and lost clients.  And the first step to avoid data center downtime is to house your critical systems  in a computer room with multiple power feeds, generators, UPS systems and cooling.  These so-called mission critical facilities are engineered to provide power and connectivity to your critical computer systems with no interruption in power or cooling.

How does this work?  N+1 data center redundancy is when a data center has at least 2 of everything, including power feeds, generators, UPS systems and cooling units.  Using this model, a data center can have a failure in a piece of equipment without downtime.  This model also supports periodic maintenance of the power and cooling systems without any data center downtime.

But the question is, can you afford to build this sort of data center redundancy?  The capital
costs of generators, UPS systems, and computer room cooling systems are very high.  Many companies will spend the money for a single generator, but not for two.  What’s the solution for reducing or eliminating data center downtime?  It may be using an outsource data center to house your critical systems.  These outsource computer rooms offer a range of data center redundancy to suit your requirements.

If downtime costs you big, consider outsource data center facilities to reduce your risks.

Alex Carroll

Managing Member at Lifeline Data Centers

Alex, co-owner, is responsible for all real estate, construction and mission critical facilities: hardened buildings, power systems, cooling systems, fire suppression, and environmentals. Alex also manages relationships with the telecommunications providers and has an extensive background in IT infrastructure support, database administration and software design and development. Alex architected Lifeline’s proprietary GRCA system and is hands-on every day in the data center.