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Is your data safe?
Written by Cale D. Hollingsworth   
Monday, 03 April 2006
Indianapolis, IN - On the evening of April 2, 2006, a major storm hit the heart of downtown Indianapolis.  This building suffered major damage and was shut down for several days.

When your company considers disaster recovery and business continuity, do you think about where your critical data and systems are located?  Even the most well designed systems and planning can be rendered useless if the servers are located in a vulnerable location.

Indianapolis Storm Damage
Regions Bank Building - April 3rd, 2006


Is your mission critical systems and data located within a hardened facility, without external glass windows? These are important questions for todays information driven business.

Newer generation facilities now offer cost effective solutions to host your production systems.  Ethernet-to-ethernet metro fiber based solutions can offer high speed connectivity to extend your LAN into a hardened data center, without costly routers or T1/DS3 equipment.  How does your current infrastructure stand up?

By relocating your existing production systems or data backups in a hardened data center, you can build a strong foundation for your enterprise or ASP.  Finding the right partners can be an intimidating task and identifying the best data center choice for your company can be difficult.  Here are some things you should consider when going through this process:

  • Is the data center truly hardened?  Does it have a glass exterior or steel frame roof?
  • Does their managed monitoring service analyze your systems from outside of the data center?  It is important to view the health of your systems from multiple external locations.
  • Are there redundant power systems, all the way from the grid to your system, available?  Some data centers put all of their power eggs into one system basket. 
  • What kind of fire suppression does the facility have?  Some facilities have critical systems covered by wet pipe sprinklers.  If anyone else in the facility were to cause a fire, everyone would feel the pain.
  • Choice of footprint - You may only need a cabinet or two of space today, but what about 5 years from now?  Choosing a data center with cage space available gives you much more flexibility than single cabinets. 
  • Carrier neutrality - Make sure you have plenty of choices regarding connectivity into your facility.  Todays metro fiber companies now offer ethernet-to-ethernet connections, which offer much higher speeds at considerably cheaper prices than yesterdays telco offerings.  (T1's and DS3's)
  • Does the data center measure up to HIPPA and Sarbanes-Oxley SAS 70 requirements for being a hardened facility?
  • Does the facility offer managed services and monitoring?  You will want experienced help to maintain your systems and monitor their health.
  • Are experienced engineers available to help you architect the best system possible?  Choosing the right data center is only part of the solution.  Properly designing and documenting redundant systems that can be deployed on-time and on-budget is just as important. 

Be sure you have all of the facts whenever making a data center decision.  Choosing the right vendors and partners can make all the difference between maintaining your business or losing it.

(Sinewave Technologies can help your company make the right decision, from technology planning to migrating your important systems into a hardened data center.  Our experienced engineers and architects have designed and implemented solutions for many large and small companies for over 10 years.  Please click contact us for more information.)
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