Data Center Selection – What do I do?

“I’m a great believer that any
tool that enhances communication has profound effects in terms of how people
can learn from each other, and how they can achieve the kind of freedoms that
they’re interested in. “Bill Gates

What a profound quote from
a visionary in the technology movement, one that paved the way to the movement
of accessing data anywhere, anytime and any way.  I’m dating myself a bit when we go back to the
days of selecting a data center just because it was nearest to where we could
do hands-on support; and where we had just enough power to manage the data plus
a few years of growth.  As remote
technology and virtual server technology became prevalent, Infrastructure
required less power and space.  Data
access allowed companies to be more agile and move their thoughts on data
center selection to enable resiliency and ease recovery. While tape backup is
still in place, the reality is having a remote data center with ease of
failover to a location geographically distant  allows recoverability to be resilient , or
have the option of basing recovery on the time it needs to be recovered and the
amount of data loss the company and customers are willing to accept.

So what do I look for in a
data center?

·        
Access
Control – Physical Security; locks, rack/cabinet locks, cameras, monitoring,
etc.

·        
Power,
cooling, and fire protection

·        
Growth
enablement

·        
If
insourced Hot Points away from an alternate data center (hot points = distance)

·        
If
outsourced, a plan for an alternate failover location

·        
Ability
to staff

·        
Federal
and regulatory compliance (as noted in my previous blog located here: http://www.drj.com/user-blogs/drj-blogs/business-continuity-and-legislative-requirements.html) – this includes political
stability

·        
Requirements
based on recoverability needs through performing a business impact assessment
(as noted in my previous blog located here: http://www.drj.com/kelly-hudson/34252-what-happens-after-the-bia.html)

·        
 Financial stability: whether you co-locate or
own the datacenter, will the datacenter be able to stay in business? Is the
market stable in the data center location?

·        
Location
stability; is this an area with frequent earthquakes or flooding, and having
the data center or a team that understands this type of algorithm on the impact
of the location

·        
Cost
of service

There are numerous other
dimensions in data center selection; especially with the growth in Cloud
technology.  I have a few questions and
would love to hear from you!

·        
What
does your checklist look like for data center selection?

·        
Are
you moving to outsourcing your data center, moving to container technology
and/or reducing your cost?

·        
Do
you know what you need for your business, and your customers?

·        
Have
you taken into consideration brand image impact on the location?