Best Practices and Critical Considerations for Choosing the Right Data Center Colocation Solution
Today’s modern IT infrastructure is demanding more out of its resources, expansion strategies, delivery methods and disaster recovery methodologies. To help meet these new growing demands, many organizations are turning to colocation providers to help service their data center needs. But what makes up a good data center decision? Is it just the location? What about the bandwidth coming into the site? What about green technologies and the adoption of new unified technologies? The reality here is that there are several key consideration points which need to be made when choosing the right data center colocation solution. Now with cloud computing and a truly distributed, data-on-demand, environment, making the right choice has become more important than ever.
Over the last decade, corporate IT infrastructure has played an increasing role in everyday business functionality. More organizations are relying on their IT systems to work harder, faster and more efficiently. This push towards an always-on, always-available environment created a growing market for data center colocation. Commercial and government entities are spending millions of dollars to ensure that their environments are capable of expanding directly in line with the needs of the organization. As the technology evolves, these companies have to make the decision as to which data center provider they wanted to work with. This is where many managers and administrators run into some design and planning challenges.
This DCK article series will seek to identify the best practices and considerations which go in to making the right decision for your colocation needs. Here are the topics that will be reviewed:
- Location – Safe, secure and accessible
- Facility – Critical infrastructure that grows with you
- Analyzing the Workload – What is being delivered and where?
- Environment Control and Management – Good SLAs make good neighbors
- Colocation Decision Checklist and Best Practices
In the end this guide series will help you create a partnership with the colocation provider resulting in a cohesive extension to your company’s already existing IT team. If you prefer you can download the entire Data Center Knowledge Guide to Colocation Selection, compliments of RagingWire.
