Rather than building and maintaining an on-premises data center, many businesses are choosing colocation facilities. With colocation, your hardware resides at a colocation provider’s facility. The equipment and data are yours, but the colocation provider manages the power, cooling, physical security, and networking connections and provides support.
Colocation eliminates many of the expenses of managing your own data center and provides significant redundancies to mitigate downtime.
Choosing the right facility is an important decision. Once you have installed your equipment and are up and running, it is not a simple task to switch to another location. So, you will want to do your due diligence to make the best possible decision. We offer this checklist to help you think about the various components of your decision.
Checklist for Choosing a Colocation Facility
- Location. Consider geographical location and risks like natural disasters, as well as proximity to your offices and users. You want a location that is convenient and secure.
- Connectivity. Ensure the facility has high-speed, redundant internet connections through multiple providers. This provides reliability and versatility in connecting to cloud services. Avoid colocation providers that mandate a specific carrier. Carrier-neutral colocation facilities provide flexibility and redundancy.
- Power. The data center should have redundant power and backup generators in case of outages. Look for a 100% uptime guarantee for power. You will also want to discuss power density to make sure the colocation facility can meet your power requirements per rack. To avoid downtime, you should look for A/B diverse power feeds with flexible configurations.
- Physical Security. Verify the facility has 24/7 security, video surveillance, and multi-factor and biometric access control to prevent unauthorized physical access.
- Fire suppression. The data center should use an advanced fire suppression system such as a pre-action, dry pipe sprinkler system for safety.
- Cooling. Check that cooling systems, like CRAC units and hot/cold aisles, are redundant to prevent overheating. The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) recommends data center temperatures be no higher than 65 to 80 degrees, with low humidity levels.
- Certifications and compliance. Look for facilities that have Uptime Institute Tier 3 or 4 certification, as well as SSAE 18 audited SOC compliance for physical and data security controls. Depending on your industry, you may also need to comply with PCI DSS, HIPAA, or other regulations, so you will want to make sure colocation providers can meet your compliance needs.
- Scalability. Ensure the data center has options to add more power, cooling, and space services as your needs grow. Whether you anticipate growing or not, you need to make sure space is available.
- Support. The facility should have 24/7 remote hands support for the physical management of servers and equipment.
- Access. You should have 24/7 access to your equipment, including remote management for rebooting or troubleshooting, without having to send staff to the facility.
- Cage options. Depending on your needs, you may want rack space, cabinets, cages, halls, or private suites.
- Interconnections. Check if the colocation facility allows cross-connections between clients within the same data center. This enables you to connect directly with cloud service providers, partners, or customers located in the same facility.
Whenever you are looking to partner with a company that will play a crucial role in how your business operates, you will want to request references from current or past clients. Contacting clients directly allows you to get an independent review.
Free Data Center Request for Proposal Template
These checklist items are just some of the criteria you will want to evaluate when choosing a colocation facility. You can download this complimentary Data Center RFP template to design your requirements when evaluating data center providers.
LOGIX Colocation Data Centers
LOGIX operates data centers in Austin, Houston, Dallas, and Fort Worth. Purpose-built for high-performance computing, these colocation facilities provide 100% uptime SLAs for power, with redundant systems for power, cooling, and security.
LOGIX data centers are carrier-neutral. You can connect to the LOGIX fiber network or use the carrier of your choice. LOGIX data centers also provide 24/7, year-round accessibility and remote hands support. Data centers are monitored around the clock by the LOGIX Network Operations Center (NOC) in the SSAE-18 audited, SOC-compliant facility. There are also multiple disaster-recovery options between select data center locations.
Call 281-688-6231 to discuss your colocation facility needs, or contact us online to request a data center tour.