Top 6 Features to Look For When Choosing a Data Center

As an organization grows, so does its data. In most cases, it does not make much sense to plan in advance for the additional costs and overhead that are required for data storage and maintenance. Using an external agency to store your data has become the smart solution, but choosing a data center needs due diligence. Here are the top 6 features to look for when choosing a data center:

1. Infrastructure and location: Once you have planned the volume of data storage that you want to outsource to a data center, you could use that as a metric for what kind of infrastructure you need to look for. The type of servers used, the location of the center and the configuration of the servers and networks are some things that can help make your decision.

2. Efficiency and Reliability: Power backup is of the utmost importance, and it is also useful to understand how this backup is configured with regard to your servers. The reliability of the data center should be at least 99.995% for the efficient functioning of your business, and this should be supported by smooth accessibility of your data for all operations.

3. Data redundancy for unexpected situations: In case of an emergency situation or as part of a disaster recovery plan, redundancy of your stored data should be ensured by the data center. Have a discussion with the data center personal to ensure that all failure scenarios, such as the ones mentioned in this article have been taken into account when planning the design of the data center.

4. Data security in all aspects: The physical and virtual security of your data must be well protected by the data center. It is important that you visit it personally to assess both these aspects before making your choice.

5. Access and connectivity for smooth functioning: As the data stored in a data center would probably not be just a static block, but would need to be accessed for your business needs, the ease of access needs to be considered as well. The network connectivity of the center plays an important part in determining this, too.

6. Scalability to support growth: As your business grows, your data storage needs would increase accordingly. The ways and speed of accessing this data would also need to adapt with this growth. Ensure that the data center has plans for future expansion and can provide you these additional resources, even with short notice.

Lifeline Data Centers offer you 99.995% reliability, a F5 tornado resistant architecture, multi-layered security systems and an incremental pricing model. Contact us to know more.

Rich Banta

Managing Member at Lifeline Data Centers

Rich is responsible for Compliance and Certifications, Data Center Operations, Information Technology, and Client Concierge Services. Rich has an extensive background in server and network management, large scale wide-area networks, storage, business continuity, and monitoring. Rich is a former CTO of a major health care system. Rich is hands-on every day in the data centers. He also holds many certifications, including: CISA – Certified Information Systems Auditor CRISC – Certified in Risk & Information Systems Management CDCE – Certified Data Center Expert CDCDP – Certified Data Center Design Professional