Is your Data Centre future proof?
One of the key areas where IT professionals feel that they lack experience is future-proofing data centres. In a survey of 300 plus respondents, just 37% said their facilities’ infrastructure was “strong and future-proof”, and only 30% said the same of their disaster recovery systems.
Recent, advancing trends like cloud and virtualisation have put pressure on data centres to keep up with the rest of the industry.
Here are three questions to ask about your data centre, whether it’s yours or one supplied by a provider, about the level of future-proofing in the facility.
1. Does the data centre follow design best practices?
A good indication of whether a data centre is future proof is the way it is designed and maintained. It also tells you whether your provider is managing the data centre in an efficient and clever way. This will be noticeable in the service you receive if it is good, chances are the data management is too.
For example, consider the power and cooling requirements. Some data centres will have huge amounts of power available, but without the cooling systems and methodologies in place to deal with the extra heat load in the data centre reducing the benefits of that capacity. It’s now more important than ever to ensure that your data centre has the correct hot and cold aisle containment installed. Blanking plates will prevent the mixing of warm and cool air and sensors will monitor temperatures around the facility.
2. What is the capacity of the data centre?
As your business grows in size and complexity, so will your data centre’s demand for capacity, power and cooling. Can your data centre accommodate this growth?
Capacity in terms of rack space is simple enough, but according to research, more than one in three (34%) IT professionals experience challenges in getting the right amount of power to their data centre infrastructure – making it a bigger problem than managing the cost of power (26%) and controlling their carbon footprint (cited by 32%). It doesn’t help that the average data centre’s power consumption per rack has increased in recent years. A rack that would have required 2kW half a decade ago is now drawing double that. All that extra power generates extra heat which, makes following design best practices essential.
3. Are other hosting options available?
Any business owner knows how quickly things can change. In the future, your IT strategy will evolve and change. It is useful to have a wide range of services, such as cloud hosting and colocation, to supplement your growth when needed. These allow flexibility in your growth, so when you win a new customer or want to launch a new product or service, you have the option to expand.
Are you looking to build a data centre? We can offer the whole package, from the consultation and design, all the way through to completion and maintenance.
Contact DCResponse here to find out more.
Data sourced from Eaton report here.
