The CFO won’t approve two generators. How do I guarantee high data center uptime?

“We’re moving our headquarters and we need to do something about replacing our data center with a more reliable facility. We’ve discussed building a new data center at the new headquarters location. But the CFO won’t approve two generators. How do I guarantee high data center uptime?” A recent visitor to our data center spoke these words to me as she toured Lifeline Data Centers’ Eastgate campus.

This IT Director had done her homework. She knew that in order to achieve extremely high uptime (28 minutes of downtime per year or less) she needed a facility that had true N+N data center redundancy. She knew that N+N meant having two of everything important: two utility feeds from the power company, two generators, two UPS systems with battery backup and two data center cooling systems and two telecommunications paths. But her CFO was unwilling to spend the capital to build an in-house Rated-4 data center facility.

Yet the nature of her company demands that data center downtime be kept to a absolute minimum, because the company’s clients expect the mission critical applications to be available day and night. To her company, downtime means lost credibility, lost revenue, lost productivity, and the risk of lost clients.

So she visited our data center to see if Lifeline’s facilities might solve her problem. Her requirements were similar to many companies:

• 99.995% uptime to meet her requirement of 28 minutes of downtime per year or less
• A simple data center pricing model that is both predictable and fair
• Low cost access to the three telecom providers they use today multiple
• Flexibility to grow and change as the company needs change

Her IT staff is sophisticated and capable, so IT services were not important to her. Her requirement was for a Midwest data center facility, not an IT service provider.

The IT Director’s needs are similar to many companies; facilities play a key role in reducing data center downtime and improving systems reliability. She knew that he quality of the data center is the most important factor maximum data center uptime, second only to avoiding human errors in the data center.

How important is uptime in your data center? Do you lose productivity if your systems are down? Or do you lose clients? Her CFO was pleasantly surprised that Lifeline’s pricing model eliminates data center capital costs and replaces them with operating expenses. And when the CFO is happy, the IT Director is happy too.

Want to learn more about improving uptime while reducing capital costs? Call the experts in Midwest data center facilities.

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.