99.995% Uptime and Affordable Colocation are Not Mutually Exclusive

99.995% uptime and affordable colocation are not mutually exclusive. How do you find a high reliability outsourced data center that is affordable? Use the checklists below.

Checklist for 99.995% uptime

Choose a hardened data center facility
Data centers should be designed to protect against the most common risks of the region. With Midwest colocation providers, F5 tornado resistant data centers are important.

Understand the data center power infrastructure
Power is the most common cause of downtime for both in-house and outsourced data centers. Study how the data center has designed the power system. Look for two power feeds, two generators, 2 UPS systems, and at least two outlets per rack. Power should be totally separate for each power feed to the rack.

Understand the data center cooling redundancy model
For data center uptime, cooling is a slightly lower risk than electrical power, but equally important. Without cooling, servers and network equipment will shut off or fail in just a few minutes. Cooling systems should not only be duplicated, they should be designed to be concurrently maintainable.

Understand the telecommunications paths and redundancies
Telecommunications circuits are critical components of uptime. Two or more entrances for telecommunications circuits allows you to build diverse path communications into your data center. Does the data center have two entrances?

Look at the data center downtime track record
Forget the design for a moment. What is the actual downtime track record of the data center? Single power feed failures should be designed to be a non-issue. Is that what has happened in actual practice?

Checklist for affordable colocation

Look for a simple data center pricing model
Colocation pricing models are often complex. Variable charges, too many line items, and overages can make costs variable and unpredictable. Look for providers with a simple data center pricing model. Floor space, active racks, and power usage should be the building blocks of the data center pricing. Watch out for telecommunications monthly cross-connect fees, along with other monthly add-on fees.

Pay for power as you use it
Any other power pricing model is likely to be in the provider’s favor.

Find a facility in a region with low data center power costs
Midwest colocation has some of the lowest power in the nation. You must clearly understand how power is measured and billed.

Find a carrier neutral data center
Access to more telecom carriers is better. Carrier neutral data centers offer multiple providers with no favoritism.

Find a data center with no cross connect fees
A few wholesale data centers provide access to telecom carriers with no monthly add-on fees. If your wide area network is complex, savings in cross-connect fees can pay for your colocation costs.

The real benefit comes when you find an wholesale colocation facility with both high data center uptime and affordable pricing. These data centers are rare. In the Midwest colocation market, Lifeline Data Centers fills the need. Interested in learning more? 317.423.2591.

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.