The data centre market is moving very fast. New technological developments are being announced every day making it very difficult for business, with core competencies not associated with this industry, to make the best long term decisions.
Increasingly companies are outsourcing their data centre requirements, preferring to swap Capex for Opex by taking advantage of the specialist skills offered by organizations that focus on data centre hosting. But not all of data centre managements are as good as each other. So what are the factors that should be looked out for when considering a change of direction?
Moving from one data centre to another is no easy task and one that should not be undertaken on a regular basis. Therefore you should reviewing data centres not only on their current facilities but also their future aspirations. What is their long term strategy and what markets are they targeting. Have these key management decisions been set out in a formal document and the investments required been properly identified? Will the demands of the markets targeted fit well with your individual company’s needs or do they exceed your requirements inflating cost unnecessarily or impinging on other aspects of day to day operations. List X centres, for example will place stringent conditions on access to the site which may be unnecessarily restrictive for clients with less sensitive security requirements.
The Uptime Institute “Data Centre Site Infrastructure Tier Standard: Operational Sustainability” identifies that an analysis of their AIR database reveals that approximately 70% of the reported data centre outages are directly attributable to human error. With this in mind it is key to know that appropriate management, training and maintenance is in place and their attendant processes and routines have appropriately documented.
The vast majority of data centres are located in city centres or business and industrial parks. This type of environment, while ideal from a physical access and travel point of view do pose serious security risks. While their owners can guarantee what is happening with in the confines of their property, they are totally exposed to the outside environment. Over recent months the problems that this can create has been amply demonstrated. Earthquakes in New Zealand, Japan and more recently Spain have highlighted this problem. Less spectacular but equally devastating are the problems create by fire in adjoining buildings, flooding, which could affect much of London and then the recent pandemic, which luckily was not a killer. But what of the future?
Bunker locations have increased in popularity too, as they offer much greater security owing to their location either underground or in mountains. The additional benefits that they offer are far greater protection from the outside world and novel way to cool
A further thought should also be given to the stability of the hosting country. What are the likely hood of strikes, vandalism and terrorism? Are they as politically stable, for example as Switzerland – renowned for its banks and disciplined culture.
Year on year the power demands made by servers increase. In the past 1.5kw per racks was common but now 6, 8, 10+ Kw per racks are not uncommon. This raises three areas for thought:
First, it’s a sorry fact that data centre locations create the situation that they either have power or have not. It is very difficult to get large increases in power from the grid in the short and even long term, particularly where there are heavy concentrations of industrial competing for supplies. A classic example of this has been shown up by the 2012 Olympic games which have placed stress on supplies. So it is critically important to know the supply situation now and into the future for any data centre re-location.
A second consideration for power is its source - is it sustainable and carbon neutral? A point that becomes increasingly important as more and more government regulations apply and companies are themselves developing Corporate Social Responsibility programmes.
And finally recognising that power may account for 40-50% of costs, it is worth while considering costs by country as these vary considerably – Switzerland and Sweden, owing to their hydro power, being amongst the cheapest.
Having power is great news but getting rid of the heat generated by it use is possibly one of the hottest topics of discussion today. The concept of PUE – Power Utilisation Efficiency – helps to demonstrate the thinking in this area. It is calculated by dividing the power entering the data centre by the power used to run the IT load. In the past the services associated with data centres such as cooling, UPS and lighting for example accounted for much more than the power drawn by the severs. This resulted in a PUE of 2.5+, equivalent to 80% of the total being used.
Today this figure has fallen for recently built centres with many quoting 1.5 or less as a result of their use of recent developments, particularly in cooling. The challenge is now on to reduce this figure even further to 1.0. This is practical by the use of innovative techniques known as “Free Cooling” which include the use of chilled water in subterranean lakes, mountain rock or local industry to mention but a few. This is an area for real creativity which will differentiate one centre from another.
The Uptime Institute defines four service levels:
Tier 1 – 99.671% availability, a basic site infrastructure
Tier 2 – 99.741% availability, a redundant site infrastructure capacity
Tier 3 - 99.982% availability, a concurrently maintainable site infrastructure
Tier 4 – 99.995% availability, a fault tolerant site infrastructure
As the tier levels increase so do the demands for redundant infrastructure capacity, the cost of the investment and in turn the charges made by some data centres to their clients. The decision as to which tier level is suited to individual customers is dependent on how much downtime they can suffer without have major consequences on their businesses. At one extreme banks for example would suffer major damage to their reputations if withdrawals could not be made, measured in seconds. At the other extreme many SMEs would suffer very little if their computing was offline, measured in minutes. Its clearly horses for courses!
The majority of data centre are carrier neutral. A term that means that there are at least 3 and at some facilities 20+carriers present within the facility. This can help reduce the cost of network access and improve business performance by finding the right connectivity partners for individual clients business. The larger the community of carriers, ISPs, Internet Exchanges and other companies available helps clients to achieve the best possible deals on IP-transit, peering arrangements, leased lines, and cabling to keep costs low and business productivity high.
Should you be invited to visit a data centre in your quest to locate a new facility there are a number of points to watch out for, which may vary dependent on the markets that the centre serves. Initially, where security is a high priority, you should be asked to pre register so that the centre has the opportunity to check you out prior to your visit. Then on arriving at the site you should encounter a number security layers. The first will be at the perimeter where they can check their daily log to see whether you are expected and have followed the pre registration procedures. On entry to the site your registration should be formalised by some sort of security tag which will restrict your access to only appropriate areas within the site. More recently RFID – radio frequency identification is starting to be introduced. This is a technology that uses radio waves to transfer data between an electronic tag and a reader for the purpose of identification and tracking. In data centre terms this would enable its security team to see where any personnel were in the center and the direction in which they were moving. A very useful development which also helps to insure that no one is trapped inside the centre in the event of a fire as a result of tight security measures.
In addition to these measures you would also expect to see CRT
The importance of forward planning by data centre owners has already been identified. This too is also of importance to the clients as they must be sure that a potential facility has not only the power identified above but also the physical space to cope with their needs over the coming years.
The cost of land varies with the concentration of people. Landlords of major city centres office buildings as a result can charge premium rates per square foot, which have to be passed on by their clients to their customers. In contrast data centres located in smaller town or rural location have lower costs, which in turn helps them to keep their prices down. Additionally their sites can also be larger providing greater scalability for the future.
Power will account for up to 50% of costs, so it’s also well worth considering data centres in countries that with lower electricity prices, typically Switzerland and Sweden.
Of recent times a number of data centres in the UK have been effected by burglaries that have interrupted services to their customers. Some, usually smaller businesses, can survive for hours or even days but those with mission critical data or applications cannot afford even a few seconds – take banks for example. So its well worth considering the effects to you and the costs that would be incurred as a result of an outage. This may make it well worthwhile considering the benefits of a bunker data centre.
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