Colocation services can revolutionize many company’s IT needs. Colocation is when a company hires a data center to hold their data on its servers rather than storing it themselves. This practice can be cost efficient and simple. Data centers can offer many other colocation services though. The head of any company’s IT department should consider other colocation examples a data center can offer. This can give you a better idea of the colocation options for your organization. Colocation can do so much more for you then cheaply store data. Here are colocation examples for data centers to implement for your company.
DCIM
Data center infrastructure management, or DCIM, is one of the most state-of-the-art services a data center can provide. DCIM is a suite of tools that let the data center monitor virtually every factor affecting their facility. This can be used by them to make sure their facility operates at peak efficiency. More interestingly, they can provide your company with data about how your servers and data. DCIM can let your company know about its power consumption and what can be done to make that consumption more efficient. This could save your organization significant time and resources on a recurring basis. DCIM can make your colocation as efficient and cost-effective as possible.
LEED Certification
LEED Certification can ensure the data center is as environmentally efficient as possible. Similar to the benefits of investing in a green office building, this system rates buildings based on their innovative designs, and resource efficiency. While this sort of certification can produce good publicity, it can also improve function. Data centers use considerable amounts of both electricity and cooling water to provide colocation services. If your data center has a lead certification, this ensures that your data is being stored in a energy efficient manner. This can help keep you costs down, since you won’t be paying the data center for wasted power.
Diverse Colocation
A data center like Flexential can help keep your colocation plan up to date with diverse storage options. As cloud storage continues to grow and 5g becomes a functional reality, a lot of ways you store data will become obsolete. Your company will need to adopt an increasingly diverse style of file storage to continue to function successfully. A data center can provide many of these new colocation services such as cloud storage. Even if they can’t, you can hire a data center to consult on a diverse colocation plan. They can steer you toward trustworthy contractors and help build a plan that will work for your company. The future of colocation will be tailored to each company, a data center can help figure out what you need and how to get it.
Server Security
Once your data is in a center’s server farm, they can build a defensive net around it that no one can crack. A data center can provide a wide range of virtual and physical security to protect your servers. Multiple level of encryption and firewalls create several deep layers to increase your security. Advanced scanning techniques and state-of-the-art monitoring ensure your data is safe from hackers or viruses. Meanwhile, data centers can protect your physical servers 24/7 with effective physical deterrents such as card-readers, reinforced security doors, and manned checkpoints. Between these two integrated security systems, colocation can occur only with workers you authorize.
N+1 Redundancy
A data center can further protect your colocated data by offering N+1 redundancy. A N+1 redundancy is built into the infrastructure of the data center. This ensures that if power, bandwidth, or other resources are shut off, a backup will take over without a drop in service. This sort of protection cannot be provided in most office buildings since it has to be built directly into the structure. With N+1 redundancy, the data center can guarantee that no matter what happens your data will be accessible. This would be a major advantage to keep all of your systems online.
A data center can implement all sort of examples of colocation. They can DCIM to make your storage more efficient. The data center can provide LEED certification to ensure you have the lowest resource cost. They can help make your colocation plan diversified over both physical and cloud servers. They can provide a wide range of security services to fit your needs. They can offer N+1 redundancy to protect you from loss of service. These services will allow the data center to provide you with the best colocation services back.