Not all data centres are created equally, so it is really important to consider the following points when choosing where to place your mission critical infrastructure.
Location
If your lucky enough to have UK wide engineer coverage location is not going to be a big concern to you, however if your engineers are in one place you don’t want them driving all over the country to fix problems with your servers so location starts to creep up the list but with remote hands offerings from most data centres the major breaks can be fixed quickly.
Power & Cooling
You need to make sure that the DC you choose is capable of delivering the power to the rack that you need to run your equipment, some operators restrict the amount of power on offer due to restrictions placed on them by the power companies.
This can become a problem if your looking to deploy higher density racks or scale up. Check what maximums can be delivered to your racks, what UPS’s and backup power systems are in place before signing any deal to make sure this fits with your plans. Also scrutinise the SLA’s in place on power and cooling and how these are monitored.
Security
In a world where cyber threats are becoming bigger than physical threats, it’s critical that whichever data centre you choose takes measures to protect itself. In doing so, the data centre will be protecting your data, your customer’s data, and in turn your business.
Compliance should be high on your agenda, check for ISO compliance, as well as a range of both cyber and physical protection such as man traps, bio-metrics, CCTV, infra-red trip wires and tremor sensors to name a few. Security differs by operator but make sure your happy that the operator can keep your assets and data secure.
Connectivity
A data centre is not a data centre unless its well connected!
There is no point in deploying your infrastructure in a data centre if you can’t connect to it. Carrier neutral data centres are a good option as this can give good options on suppliers. It’s equally important that a data centre is able to connect to a larger network of cloud services, so check whether your chosen facility has its own network or cloud platform, or whether it can connect to third party cloud services such as AWS and Azure to name a few.
Access
This might seem an obvious one but some operators limit or restrict you access to ‘business’ hours, this can really cause issues especially if you have server issues in the dead of night hand have to wait several hours to get onto site to fix it. Equally operators with a complicated or slow access request system can be harmful to keeping your equipment serviced.
Choosing the right data centre for your business is a difficult decision and if your going to be tied into lengthy contracts you need to make sure the facility fits with your immediate and future plans.
If you have questions on this topic or would like to speak to us about your options then give us a call or drop us an email, we would be happy to help.
Call – 01452 452 452
Email – sales@indectron.com
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