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Ditch the Messy Server Room and Move to Colocation   no comments

Jan 5, 2016 @ 9:13am colocation

messy-server-room-wiringIn the late 80s /early 90s times where starting to change, this wonderful technology era we live in now was just beginning. Businesses now, need to be online in order to stay competitive and grow with this new age.

Like most business a Server Room was built, in a spare room or space in your office or home and today now resembles a pile of mis-colored wires that you could spend days trying to untangle. You purchased equipment that easily fit into your budget, and your team was able to configure the networking without any troubles. This setup was the same in all business across the board. In the beginning of this era, you could get away with this. There was no thought of cooling systems or ventilation. No notion of backup power systems, or any real working order was to be found in your Server Room.

Once again, the era of technology has changed. Businesses need their operations to run with super speeds, be secure, maintained, monitored, and most of all be redundant. The terms Server Room and Data Center could once be used interchangeably, no longer can they now.

A Server Room can be any room, in any building that houses servers. Whereas a Data Center, is a whole building designed to support and provide a secure, power protected, environmentally controlled space, used for accommodating servers, networking, and computer equipment.

 

Some of the key points to a Data Center, a Server Room does not have.

Security and Monitoring:

Most Server Rooms do not have a high volume of security. Besides the buildings overall security, there may be a lock on the Server Room door.

Data Centers pride themselves in the security features they offer. All entrances and exits are secured with a key coded entry system, as well as alarms. Not just alarms for entry. Alarms for temperature control, air pressure, fire / water control, ect. All Data Centers have network cameras, accessible to their staff and security team in a needed event. The cores / racks the servers are housed in are all locked. Only opened when your team needs to visit or by the Data Center staff, if needed.

Connectivity:

What good is your server if you have a fixed bandwidth rate? Most Server Rooms are capped off by their ISP as they are using a residential internet service.

Data Centers do not use any type of residential internet service and most times are able to set the bandwidth limits as they are needed by the server.

Redundancy:

If there is a power failure at your business, do you have a backup power plan? Most Server Rooms run from the same power source, as the full office. Making your sites and servers go down if there is ever a power failure.

Data Centers have a plan for any type of failure. When it comes to power failures, most Data Centers have battery backups, automatically triggered if the main power supply is not responding. When the system sees the backup batteries are being utilized, another backup power source is engaged, the generator.   At this point the battery backups turn off and all power is controlled by the generator until normal power is restored.

Affordability:

With a Server Room, you are accumulating all the costs that go along with it.  You may have had to cut advertising short or possibly even lay off good employees as the costs to maintain and house your equipment have risen. At a Data Center all those costs are tied into your package and at a much, much lower cost.

 

Environment:

Datacenters control the cooling and humidity – to a precise and perfect level to keep your equipment running as long as possible.  Storing equipment in non-conditioned environmental space like your server room or office closet will shorten the life of your equipment significantly (meaning it will cost you real money to replace broken equipment sooner).  Electronics are sensitive to things like electrical and static shock, which occur due to improper humidity (moisture) and you can even find corrosion on the electronics in some poor environmental conditions.  Its crucial if you have valuable equipment to store it in a properly humidified and cooled location like a datacenter.

 

Green (going Green):

Some modern datacenters, like TurnKey Internet’s Green Datacenter , offer one additional benefit ontop of everything above.  Your IT equipment and servers consume less energy in terms of cooling and power draw in a modern green-focused datacenter – and in TurnKey Internet’s datacenter your equipment consumes energy provided by only by the Sun (on-site solar array) and Water (Hydro power) providing zero carbon foot prints for your IT infrastructure versus having it at your office.

 

Our offices do not look anything like they did 20 years ago. Our businesses are not what they were 20 years ago. Most companies have employees living all around the world, remoting in for work. Your administrative staff is no longer dependent on white out, typewriters, and filing cabinets. You attend conferences and meetings by using a phone, tablet, or even your watch. The majority of your business is conducted over email and most of your sales are placed through your website. In order to keep up with these growing times, we now need to ditch the Server Room and head to the Data Center.

 

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