Selecting a data center is a large consideration for your business due to the fact you are electing to house your critical tech infrastructure within the walls of someone else’s facility. While each business has its own unique set of needs to consider when looking for the perfect data center, here are 5 helpful hints that can be modified for your business to hopefully get your brain churning on what it is that will suit your company needs to the highest extent.
A secondary consideration is distributing your applications across cloud providers you likely will be soon. Flexera’s State of the Data Center 2022 survey results have indicated that 79 percent of respondents said they’re incorporating multiple public clouds, and 60 percent report using more than one private cloud.
LOCATION
Arguably one of the most important factors that are involved when selecting a data center is location, with the first consideration being how long it would take for someone from your company to travel to the physical location. Moreover, having an accessible approach with other considerations like upgrades and servicing of your equipment, and even the climate of the area alongside natural disasters (hurricanes, earthquakes, etc) can have an impact on your service and any potential outages. If your center does fall within one of these areas, ensure that you are able to view their plan of action for when outages occur.
FLEXIBILITY AND EXPANSION CAPABILITY (SCALABILITY)
The average lifespan of a data center spans 10-15 years so it is important to find a provider that will go the distance with your company. Finding a level of flexibility with problem solving in addition to standard offerings can provide your company with more than just the basic out-of-the-box experience, and finding a center that can scale with you over time is important as your business grows.
RELIABILITY
Ensuring that you have a reliable provider is very important when seeking out your data center. Reliability is measured as uptime in the world of data centers. A reliable provider should have five 9s uptime, meaning they are reliable at least 99.999% of the time. In addition to being reliable the majority of the time, ensure that your data center has a plan for planned and unplanned outages, customer feedback, and on-site support. Sourcing the area and seeing a large number of providers can also point to a geographically favorable area with good connectivity. Each of these will make for a much more reliable provider.
DEPLOYMENT EFFICIENCY & NETWORK ECOSYSTEM
Considerations to keep in mind when planning your data center location is how fast you will need not only your initial infrastructure up and running, but also how quickly you’ll potentially need new or additional rack space in the future of your company. Second to this, interconnecting within a shared data space for colocation gives you the ability to connect with partners and even competitors, bringing a large amount of value to your company. Good questions to ask in this topic are: is the facility carrier neutral? Are there already customers interconnecting? Is there a platform in their organization that provides support for these processes?
FINANCIAL STABILITY
The bottom line is important when considering any provider. You do not want to spend too much of your resources, or your time to invest in a center that does not have the longevity to match. Ensuring that you are signing on with a center that can grow with you over the course of many years is huge when looking at stability.
SUMMARY
Keeping in mind these 5 tips will help you to select the right infrastructure for your company, so you can take the guesswork out of the day to day functional operations, and keep your eye on the larger picture. Be sure to carry a list of thoughtful questions with you when sourcing the proper location for your data center, and know that companies like Sphaera with the privacy controls, on-site maintenance, reach, and ability to scale may be just the option for you.
