What to Do When You Need to Expand Your Current Data Center?

What can you do when you need to expand your current data center?

Consider this real life scenario that took place recently. MIT launched edX, an online education portal and estimated that approximately 5,000 users would sign on. The actual number of users that signed up was an unbelievable 120,000! While there was tremendous excitement on the success of the portal, it brought with it an unprecedented load on the data center and expansion options had to be evaluated quickly.

In case you are facing a similar situation, here are the top 4 options that you can consider for scaling up your data center capacity.

• Order a containerized data center: Yes, this sounds unbelievable but it is true. You can ship a data center almost overnight and plug it in into your existing infrastructure. The cons, however, are based around security and this should be a preferred option for storing non critical data.
• Use a public cloud: Plugging into a public cloud such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) can also help solve the data center expansion situation. This option is best for organizations that have temporary demand spikes since it is the most flexible and granular option, offering on demand scalability.
• Rent a colocation data center: In this option you rent the infrastructure and space, and can have your own IT staff or even consultation from the wholesale data center organization. It is important to establish service level agreements (SLAs) and negotiate a well written contract in this case.
• Alternatively, you could also use a hybrid approach where you mix and match the various options depending on your different data storage requirements. The benefit here is that the solution is more customized to your needs and is the best fit solution.

To go the wholesale colocation data center route, consult the experts at https://lifelinedatacenters.com/ for a site visit or quote.

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.