6 Tips to Find the Right Colocation Center for You

Transcription

1 6 Tips to Find the Right Colocation Center for You

2 Choosing a colocation provider is one of the most important IT decisions you can make for your business. Think about it; your most valuable technology assets the systems that run your business need to be placed into the most reliable environment to ensure they are always up and running, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. We ve all read stories about how major systems outages have cost large companies millions of dollars. The problem is just as important to small and medium businesses, which don t have the enormous resources of Fortune 500 companies, but still need to be positive their systems will always be working. You shouldn t keep those systems in-house, because it is prohibitively expensive and much less reliable or secure than collocating in a data center. But how do you choose the right one? These 6 tips from subject matter experts will get you up to speed on how to evaluate data centers with the same critical eye of industry veterans, and help you make the right selection for your data center colocation provider. The first 2 steps you should do before visiting the data center. Steps 3, 4,5 and 6 are tips on what to look for once you visit the data center. 2 6 Tips to Find the Right Colocation Center for You

3 Before 1. Know What Technologies You Are Already Using This first step should be easy enough. Ask yourself: How many racks or cabinets am I currently using? What is my power usage? Who is my internet service provider? What is my DR/ COOP* These questions are important because it will help you to understand the size of the footprint you will need in a data center, and help you later on to compare apples to apples when you are evaluating proposals. Advanced questions: How many external points of contact (remote locations) does my business have? Do I need to be FISMA, FedRAMP, of HIPAA compliant, or any other of the dozens of compliance and regulatory certifications required to run a business in the digital economy? Do I handle personal financial or health records? How secure does my payment storage need to be? *DR/COOP A Disaster Recovery/ Continuity of Operations Plan is part of a principle called continuity of operations that helps to ensure troublefree operations through unanticipated events. 3 6 Tips to Find the Right Colocation Center for You

4 2. Know Your Reasons for Colocating A map is important to any successful journey. Why are you collocating? Are you simply doing a forklift move into a more redundant and reliable facility, or is the move being done because you are trying to transform your IT infrastructure? Is this a production facility or a backup site? IT Transformation IT business transformation is a thorough or dramatic change in the technologies and business processes a company employs to reach important business goals The idea: Align your technology systems with your business, to help you to streamline processes, add stability, or open a new market. Different data centers provide different types of services, and are better fits for some clients than others. Transformational IT initiatives are better suited to services with a rich portfolio of services within the data center, such as hybrid cloud environments, or other types of managed services. Pure backup sites are better suited to data centers with a high redundancy rating. Knowing why you re moving into the data center helps you to know which data center to move into. Great! Now you re ready to visit a few data centers and select a provider. 4 6 Tips to Find the Right Colocation Center for You

5 Inside 3. Ask Questions about Security and Reliability Security: One of the most immediate benefits of colocation is the improved security posture your business will benefit from in a data center. Make sure to ask about visitor and guest check-in procedures, and look for tell-tale signs of security such as security cameras, digital access control systems and other security features. Redundancy: One of the major reasons to collocate your IT resources in a data center is to benefit from the exceptional reliability provided by purpose-built structures. However, not all data centers make the grade. You need to be asking: Do they have 2 independent generators? Do they have two different power feeds coming from 2 different substations? In the event of an emergency, the data center needs to be self-sustaining in regards to power for a minimum of 96 hours. Independent generators and multiple utility feeds are best-practice when it comes to redundancy. Anything less is insufficient and puts your business at risk. Biometric, Pin, Keycard, fingerprint scanners, and Facial Recognition Technology help you evaluate how secure the data center is! No Security Check-in personnel. Any data center without on-site personnel managing the visitor check-in process is a no-go! 5 6 Tips to Find the Right Colocation Center for You

6 4. Support & Services The modern data center is more than just a shell providing pipe, power and ping. There is real value in the services that can be provided within the data center as well. At the bare minimum, ask to be sure there is 24 hour NOC (Network Operations Center) support that provides a Smart Hands service, so that devices can be re-booted quickly, and software updates can be done on site. Beyond the levels of support on-site, the best data centers will have other technology services on-premises. Infrastructure in the form of private and public clouds can provide cost-effective ways for your business to expand, for instance. Redundancy The duplication of critical components or functions of a system with the intention of increasing reliability of the system, usually in the case of a backup or fail-safe Similarly, services such as cyber security and connectivity may be provided either by the data center colocation provider, or by service providers within the building that have a formal, hands-on partnership with the data center. Ask if the NOC supplies spare parts. It shows their commitment to service and client success. The fact that they ve got you covered, and thought of everything, is a good indication of the provider s dedication to customer Ask how they re NOC is staffed. Do they have engineers onsite 24/7? There s a big difference between an engineer on-site and an engineer on-call when you need one. 6 6 Tips to Find the Right Colocation Center for You

7 5. Compliance, Past Performance, & Auditability All technology systems, regardless of industry, will need audit support at some point. Don t get stuck later on find out now. As your business continues to grow, you will need to periodically evaluate your performance to determine what new systems you need to add, how secure your client data is, and numerous other documentable tasks. The right data center will not only be able to help you with audits and compliance, but will have a template for those tasks and will offer to help you achieve the standard your business requires. Acheivment of SSAE- 16 (SOC), PCI/ DSS, HIPAA and FISMA. These certifications represent the highest levels of standards for financial, healthcare, and federal institutions. A truly compliant data center will be actively offering to assist with client audits, and data centers that are not truly compliant do not address this, because they can t help you. 7 6 Tips to Find the Right Colocation Center for You

8 6. Picking the Right Partner Many people think picking the right data center colocation provider is about simply evaluating the physical space of a building. They couldn t be more wrong. What you are really looking for is a partner, an expert in the field of IT services; someone who will be a trusted adviser that can help your business execute on its technology needs and align them with your strategic goals to help you grow. The right partner will offer you flexible offerings, cloud integration and the services that are best for you; NOT the ones that are best for them. They will take the time to understand your needs and your vision, and work with you to present solutions that will address them. To learn more about how AiNET helps our clients to maximize the value they realize through their data center technologies, reach out to us at If you re ready to come look at your first data center, click here to schedule a tour today! If you re ready to come look at your first data center, click here to schedule a tour today! 8 6 Tips to Find the Right Colocation Center for You