Midwest data centers

Putting your critical IT equipment in a midwest data center is an all around smart value proposition.

The midwest – a great place for a data center

Building a data center is expensive.  Aside from the equipment, there is also land, construction, rent, taxes, connectivity charges, power, and personnel.  All of these come at a cost.

Traditionally, data centers were located in large metropolitan areas, because that’s where the connectivity was.  Large network access points, with attached data centers, popped up in Chicago, Newark, San Francisco, and other major cities, because there was plenty of providers available to make connectivity affordable.

However, building a data center in a big city comes at a cost.  Land and space are at a premium, and go for very high rates.  Personnel costs are more expensive, and power charges are expensive.  These costs are considerable, for major data centers.

In recent years, connectivity into outlying areas, outside of major metro zones, has become much more accessible.  Data centers are more commonly being built where the major expense items, such as power, land, and personnel, are much more affordable.  The midwest provides all of these things.

Security

But more than just cost savings, the benefit of building outside of major metro areas has an added benefit: security.  Less people around mean less worry when it comes to privacy and access.  Threats of terrorism and violence are less likely than they are in major cities.

Redundancy and Uptime

Is your data center maximally redundant?

Running a data center is a tricky business.  Operational controls and efficiences are paramount.  From the customer perspective though, the key word is: uptime.  While the day to day operations are important, its the operations that result in maintaining customer uptime as the most critical.

Many data centers tout uptime statistics.  In fact, the Uptime Institute is an organization that has developed standards surrounding levels of redundancy within data centers and the types of uptime that is to be expected.  Most data centers strive to achieve what is known as Tier IV, or the highest tier.  To get there, a data center must have multiple active systems (cooling, electrical, etc) such that failure of any single system goes unnoticed.  This allows the data center to target 99.995% uptime.

Because of the expense, most data centers choose to build to Tier III, or close to it.  They sacrifice some of the inherent redundancies for operational and capital cost.

Cooling Redundancy

One major aspect of data center redundancy is in the cooling systems.  Most data centers employ multple CRAC (Computer Room Air Conditioner) units to keep the data center area cool.  Generally, an extra unit is installed such that failure of any single unit will go unnoticed to the end user.  This is generally known as an N+1 setup, meaning N is the number of units needed to operate, and +1 denotes an extra unit is running as a backup.

While this design is sound, the CRAC units are not the only part of the entire cooling system that is critical.  The CRAC units themselves must be serviced by another piece of the HVAC chain, be it a refrigerant based system or a chilled water based system.  Thus, there should also be some redundancy in those servicing systems as well.

Does the data center have multiple units that can withstand a single point of failure?  If not, then having an extra CRAC unit is not an encompassing N+1 design of the overall HVAC system.

Furthermore, what about the piping to and from the CRAC units?  Are there multiple sets of pipes supporting the units in case a pipe does break?  If there is a single piece of infrastructure, such as a pipe, that supports multiple units, and there is no backup pipe, there may be problems.

Electrical Redundancy

Most data centers will offer redundant electrical circuits, commonly called A+B feeds.  Again, it is necessary to follow the distribution chain of these circuits back to the source.  Do they go to separate power distribution units?  If not, there is a single point of failure.  Do they go back to separate UPS units?  If not, there is a single point of failure.  Does the power come in from two separate transformers?  If not, there is a single point of failure.

Furthermore, what happens during a power outage.  Just about every critical data center will have backup generator capacity, but is it just a single generator?  What happens if the generator fails to start?  What happens if the service department is performing an oil change on the generator when the power goes out?  Again, this is another single point of failure risk that must be analyzed.

Disaster Recovery

Understand why you need to take it seriously.

Sooner or later, some aspect of a critical IT system is going to fail.  It may be from component failure, or it may come from an outside source, like a hacker being malicious.  It could even stem from an act of nature, like a fire or flood wiping out the contents of a hard drive.  Or it could simply be internal, where someone accidental deletes a file they didn’t mean to.

Today, just about every business relies on some kind of critical IT system.  For a small company, this may be a server in the closet that files are shared on.  Nonetheless, those files are important to that business, and without them, it could cease to operate completely.

Calculated risk

Not having a strategy and plan in place is a recipe for disaster in itself.  While a business may have an insurance policy that pays for equipment replacement, the value on the data, and time utilized to attempt to restore it, generally go way beyond what any policy would cover.

Teaming with a data center is an important strategy in the ongoing process of disaster recovery.

Metered Power

Data Cave’s metered power offering can be a huge cost benefit to the end user.

Understanding Data Center Power

Each cabinet or rack installed in the data center needs power to operate.  Data centers generally charge for this power at a flat fee per circuit, based on the total capacity of the circuit.

When data centers charge for power in this fashion, their total charge must include 4 items:

1. Their cost for the incoming power used in the circuit
2. Their cost of the overhead for maintaining the power
3. Their cost for the cooling required, since the power will turn into heat
4. Markup

The above calculation is usually easy for the data center.  They know how much they are paying for power, they can factor in an overhead rate for the ancillary equipment (UPS systems, cabling, maintenance, surge suppression, etc).  #3, the cost for the cooling, is a bit tricker as it requires the data center to know how efficient their systems are to understand how much power is required to cool the IT systems.  Many data centers will estimate this, the most common estimation being the same cost as #1.  That is, there’s just as much cost in cooling the load as there is in heating it up.  While for well design data centers, that is not the case, it provides a rule of thumb that many follow.

Thus, the overall price a customer will pay for power is usually more than 2x the actual cost for just that power, simply due to the overhead.

Playing off inefficiencies

While the data center may provide a 120V/20A circuit, rarely are all 20A of that circuit used.  In fact, 20% of that circuit simply cannot be used, because of electrical code rules.  But furthermore, in many cases, a customer may only be utilizing a fraction of the total available power on a circuit.  This is common place in the data center, and it is also a big source of profit.

The profit stems from the fact that the data center is charging the customer for the worst case usage – that is, for 20A.  In reality, the customer may be only drawing 10A.  As such, the data center is profiting from the difference.  This profit comes from lower electrical usage, lower cooling usage, and lower total overhead.

While the overall cost and profit may be small at this scale, imagine a data center customer with multiple cabinets and multiple electrical circuits.  What if, instead of 1 circuit, the customer had 40.  And what if, on after, those circuits were only being 1/2 utilized.  The customer is overpaying for power that they are not utilizing.

Enter Metered Power

Data Cave’s electrical infrastructure was designed from the start for metering power at the individual circuit level.  With metered power, the end customer pays for power just like they were paying the electric company – based on actual consumption.  This billing arrangement can provide significant savings over a flat circuit fee, as the total consumption is aggregated across all customer circuits.

It also allows the customer better insight into how much power is actually being consumed.  It gives the customer feedback to know which systems draw more power, and which draw less.  Based on that information, a customer may be able to do a cost benefit analysis on when it’s time to replace systems with those that are more efficient – and reap the savings.

Cosmetic Updates

Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve spruced up the first floor office area.

Artwork has been hung.

In additional to artwork in the lobby, we’ve added a visual monitoring system in the Network Operation Center (the three monitors behind the window).

The conference room has been outfitted with furniture.

Outside, trees have been planted.