6 Key Benefits of Local Colocation Data
Centers
For many businesses today, colocation just makes sense. It provides the infrastructure and
security of a dedicated data center without the costs of maintaining such a facility on your own.
By housing their servers in a colocation facility, companies enjoy the benefits of having their
servers in the cloud while still maintaining physical control of their systems.
When a manufacturer decides to build a new plant, most build near existing roads and utilities.
Taking advantage of existing infrastructure mitigates the costs to the company. Building their
own roads and power plant significantly increases the costs of both construction and ongoing
operation and maintenance.
Today, information is the main commodity and that information resides on servers. Servers
require infrastructure as well; such as power, cooling, connectivity, and security, all built with
redundancies and backups. Colocation gives you the ability to to mitigate costs by housing your
servers in a facility that provides the infrastructure and physical security to keep your
deployment safe and operational.
Colocation gives you control over your systems. You and your tech team can physically access
servers at a colocation center as needed.
7 Benefits of a Local Colocation Data Center
Given that physical access is one of the main advantages of colocation, why would you want
your primary colocation data center situated across the world, or even in a different region of the
country? That negates the whole purpose.
Let’s take a look at some of the reasons why a local colocation data center can be hugely
beneficial to you and your business.
Advantages of Local Colocation
1. 24/7 Access
Many business leaders who move their data off-site are concerned that they won’t have
perpetual access to their server stacks, and risk getting caught locked out, as it were, just when
they have an emergency. By opting for a local colocation facility, you can have access to your
hardware – and your data – at all times.
2. Check on Security Yourself
Security is one of the main comforts of a colocation data center, and when the facility is within
an hour of your place of business, checking up on security in person is easy. You can use key
cards or biometric security features to gain access to the servers. Other regulated entry and
camera surveillance help ensure that your data can’t be tampered with, in the physical plant.
3. Keep an Eye on Redundancies
Today’s hardware needs certain cooling (HVAC), conditioned power, backup generators,
sophisticated security systems and the like, and each of these systems has its backup in case of
failure. Colocation facilities are built specifically to meet these needs, and because they are
constantly monitored by professionals in charge of these arrangements for several tenants,
using a plant like this can save you significant amounts of money. When your colocation plant is
nearby, you can check up on these systems and their failsafe backups. You don’t need to
personally make sure they’re all operational at all times, but if you want to drop in and take a
peek, you still have the option.
4. Face-to-Face Relationships
The staff of your local colocation center provide not only real live customer service when you
need it, but also they monitor your data center servers in person and use their expertise to
determine that everything is as it should be, and assess if and when any changes are warranted.
They maintain correct and up-to-date certifications and make sure that security is always
thorough in its protection of your equipment. When your data is stored far away, you can’t have
the same kind of relationships with these professionals that you can cultivate when you see
them on a regular basis.
5. Someone to Turn To
Another benefit of knowing the real live people who staff your local colocation center is that you
know whom to turn to if you run into any trouble or need help. Cloud storage services may
answer their phones, or they may not, but the people actually in charge of the plants at
companies like that are usually not the people available to speak with you. With local
colocation, it’s a smaller team in charge of pleasing a relatively small group of tenants, so there
is greater accountability and expertise among the staff.
6. Local Network Access
When your local internet service provider is also your local colocation solution, everything runs
more efficiently and smoothly. Upload, download, and disaster recovery all becomes a far easier
and faster enterprise when you’re on a dedicated network. No need to share bandwidth with
the entire Internet and no need to send your data around the world before it makes its way to
and from your servers.
7. Multihoming
In contrast, multi-homed systems are designed to run in multiple datacenters as a core
design property, so there is no on-the-side failover concept. A multi-homed system runs
live in multiple datacenters all the time. Each datacenter processes work all the time, and
work is dynamically shared between datacenters to balance load. When one datacenter is
slow, some fraction of work automatically moves to faster datacenters. When a datacenter
is completely unavailable, all its work is automatically distributed to other datacenters.
There is no failover process other than the continuous dynamic load balancing. Multi-
homed systems coordinate work across datacenters using shared global state that must be
updated synchronously. All critical system state is replicated so that any work can be
restarted in an alternate datacenter at any point, while still guaranteeing exactly once
semantics. Multi-homed systems are uniquely able to provide high availability and full
consistency in the presence of datacenter level failures.
In any of our typical streaming system, the events being processed are based on user
interactions, and logged by systems serving user traffic in many datacenters around the
world. A log collection service gathers these logs globally and copies them to two or
more specific logs datacenters. Each logs datacenter gets a complete copy of the logs,
with the guarantee that all events copied to any one datacenter will (eventually) be copied
to all logs datacenters. The stream processing systems run in one or more of the logs
datacenters and processes all events. Output from the stream processing system is usually
stored into some globally replicated system so that the output can be consumed reliably
from anywhere.
In a multi-homed system, all datacenters are live and processing all the time. Deploying
three datacenters is typical. In steady state, each of the three datacenters process 33% of
the traffic. After a failure where one datacenter is lost, the two remaining datacenters
each process 50% of the traffic.
Keep it Local
Opting for a local colocation data center may feel like the right move, but the odds are good that
you have questions how such a facility will benefit your specific business, and also how you
choose the right center for you. Turn to Atlantech for guidance – helping people with these types
of decisions is our specialty.
The Benefits of a Data Center for your
Business
Data centers are the powerhouses of the industrial world. As technological advances continue to
change the way organizations do business, the need for data and power increases. Often, this
significant increase in resources is too much for many companies to handle internally or with
existing corporate infrastructure. Many hours and personnel are required to maintain the high
demand. The utilization of a data center allows a business to outsource its power needs.
Organizations benefit from data centers in a variety of ways. Most specifically, they allow a
company to focus on its consumer objectives instead of technological maintenance.
“To prepare for the future, companies need to consider expanding IT applications as part of their
growth and stability,” said Ben Schneider, Project Director and Industrial Market Segment
Leader at Granger Construction. “Having a purpose-built facility with redundant power and
cooling systems will increase security and productivity of critical business applications.”
Protecting Power
Outsourcing data control lessens the impact of a power disaster or failure. Technological and
natural power outages can wreak havoc on an organization that is supplying its own power
because servers that are kept onsite are prone to more broadband issues. Losing power for as
little as 1/50 of a second can trigger events that may keep IT equipment unavailable for as long
as 15 minutes to many hours. Onsite power failures are incurable when they result in data loss.
Data centers are also more secure than traditional data storage methods. The problems and risk
associated with data loss are intensifying. Today’s storage systems, servers and network devices
use components so miniaturized that they falter and fail under power conditions that earlier-
generation equipment easily withstood. A data center provides reliable storage without the
glitches of portable technology.
Cutting Costs
Some experts believe the U.S. economy loses between $200 billion and $570 billion a year due
to power outages and other disturbances. Data centers eliminate a portion of this loss. They
utilize a system that can withstand unfavorable power conditions that generators and surge
suppressors cannot. Generators and surge suppressors require significant energy to start up and
maintain. They are also not immune to power spikes and other electrical disturbances. These
factors contribute to skyrocketing power costs.
The cost of power and cooling has increased significantly in recent years. Data center managers
are responsible for achieving high availability while simultaneously reducing power costs.
Highly efficient Uninterrupted Power Supply systems can help with this goal. Products are
available today that were not an option even a few years ago.
Improving Efficiency
By law, electrical power can vary widely enough to cause significant problems for IT equipment.
According to current U.S. standards, voltage can legally vary from 5.7 percent to 8.3 percent
under absolute specifications. This means that utility services promising 208 volts may legally
deliver within the range of 191 to 220 volts. A data center eliminates the uncertainty surrounding
power levels with strict guidelines and monitoring processes.
Additionally, utility power isn’t always clean. Businesses may have their own power source but
public utilities are often used to supply central hub. IT functions are slowed because of the
numerous organizations utilizing the same power grid. Companies that utilize a data center will
notice significant improvements in technological speed and function, as data centers privatize
power to ensure that only one business is connected to each grid.