subject: Things To Ask A Potential Data Centre Provider [print this page] To the less-informed, the topic of data centres can be a daunting one. This is often exacerbated by Cloud or managed hosting service providers baffling customers with marketing lingo during sales pitches. When talking about their data centre credentials, some providers may try to disguise their shortcomings by reeling off jargon around their PDUs, SLAs and MTBFs. (protocol data units, service-level agreements and mean time between failures).
Businesses looking for a data centre should stay away from these types of providers. What these providers often fail to address are the issues that really matter, like the burning issues of data centre efficiency, and security. In an age when data centre running costs are at an all time high, any provider worth their salt should be telling customers about everything theyre doing to keep costs down, by introducing energy efficiency measures.
Committing to long-term contracts in last-generation data centres now could mean additional costs down the line. It is critical to house your data in an energy efficient, next-generation data centre.
When looking for your next data centre, be sure to ask the service provider about the following things:
Free (or fresh) air cooling
Free (or fresh) air cooling is one of the key efficiency drivers for modern data centres. Free air cooling works by pulling in ambient air from outside the data centre via window louvres, which offers a much more energy efficient alternative to using power-hunger chiller units all year round.
Power availability
Make sure the data centre is designed with power availability in mind. How much power is available to each rack? 4kW racks are now the norm, with 8kW presentation. Does the potential provider test their failover procedure to UPS and generators? Is this weekly, monthly or just once a year?
