Lifeline Reveals More Data Center Details

FORT WAYNE, Ind. – A huge new data co-location center in the Fort Wayne area will be an economic driver for northeast Indiana. The new Lifeline Data Center, expected to open later this year, will be a Rated-4 data center, “but our specifications far exceed the already high standards of a Rated-4 center,” said Lifeline Data Centers’ founders, Richard Banta and Alex Carroll.

The announcement of the new data center was made at The Orchard Ridge Country Club March 25. For security reasons the specific location of data centers is rarely revealed.

The data center will be a large structure filled with computers that store critical information for businesses, hospitals, government, universities and other institutions that need to safeguard their critical data in a secure facility.

“Although we won’t employ large numbers of people,” Carroll said, “a Lifeline Data Center will be a major drawing card for new businesses looking at northeast Indiana to locate — and for existing companies to expand or to increase their capacity for local and secure data storage.”

The Lifeline Data Center will be a wholesale co-location facility; a high tech landlord; and a compliance boutique.

Lifeline has been serving companies since 2001 in healthcare, software development, utilities, life sciences and government, by providing a high level of offsite data security solutions, decreasing the risk of downtime and associated expenses.

A Rated-4 data center is considered the most ‘robust’ of data centers. It is designed to host mission-critical servers and computer systems, with fully redundant cooling, power, network links and storage subsystems and compartmentalized security zones controlled by biometric access controls. A Rated-4 center guarantees 99.995 percent availability. Components are fully fault-tolerant including uplinks, storage, chillers, HVAC systems and servers. Everything is dual-powered.

Richard Banta, Lifeline chief data center officer, said the Fort Wayne Lifeline Data Center will:

• be audit ready for CCHIT,SSAE 16, TIA-942, NFPA, HIPAA, FIMSA, FDA, PCI/DSS and Sarbanes Oxley
• have master electricians, HVAC specialists, and diesel mechanics on staff
• provide multiple redundancies for reliability with three uninterruptable power supply (UPS) feeds to server cages
• have custom designed and built AC and server cooling systems and
• offer access to many telecommunications providers.
• Banta said the Fort Wayne Lifeline Data Center will have onsite compliance expertise, including two certified information systems analysts on staff and one certified data center expert, of which there only nine in the U.S.

The Fort Wayne Lifeline Data Center will also offer one-of-a-kind secured co-location office and adaptive manufacturing space. Lifeline maintains a current SSAE 16 Type II Audit Report and as a compliance boutique, has in-house compliance experts.

The new Fort Wayne data center will follow reliability-centered maintenance (RCM) protocols.

“RCM is the gold standard for systems that cannot fail such as passenger aircraft, fighter jets and weapons systems,” explained Banta.

Most clients choose to use Lifeline purely as a landlord, fully managing their own information technology infrastructure. Other clients use Lifeline’s co-location facilities and office space along with Lifeline’s managed services to supplement their own IT staff. To learn more about Lifeline Data Centers, visit www.lifelinedatacenters.com.

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.