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Regardless of business size, industry or history, the fast-paced digital world is driving an increased need for disaster recovery and business continuity, and on the whole, the enterprise is responding appropriately by incorporating more robust solutions for their IT. Organizations are looking to colocation data centers as a great way to ensure business continuity while offloading some of the burden through outsourced solutions. However, many may not realize that not every data center partner is the same, or that choosing the right data center may be the most important element in a disaster recovery strategy.
Navigating a market with so many options can make selecting the best facility a challenge, but if businesses know what to look for, they can ensure they’re getting the best of disaster recovery with the provider that delivers every advantage they need. While some individual concerns may differ depending on the customer or the use case, there are some core items that every business should look for when choosing a disaster recovery data center.
What to Look for in A Disaster Recovery Data Center
1. Location and Associated Characteristics Are Important
Geographical location is the foundation of a reliable and secure disaster recovery facility, so this is a consideration that should be at the top of the enterprises list of facility features. Proximity to users or business locations is one facet of this, but when it comes to business continuity and IT security, the data centers enterprises need are the ones that are also in areas with low risks of natural disasters. On average, we recommend at least a distance of 50 miles from your disaster recovery facility to your offices for optimal coverage. In the U.S., this means avoiding tornado alley (which commonly encompasses states including Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and Missouri), staying away from the coasts to avoid hurricanes, locating outside of flood plains and remaining away from earthquake prone zones like California. Protection against environmental concerns should also include the physical structure, such as wind ratings that protect against high winds. Areas with access to a rich pool of technology talent and a favorable business climate help build on this reliability and overall advantage.
2. Physical Redundancy: Utilities and Security
Beyond items like wind ratings, the best home for IT should offer a host of built-in physical security and redundancy measures. This means redundancy built into primary power, water, and network utilities as well as multi-layer security that extends from gated entry all the way to the locks on the cabinet doors. Power should be delivered by feeds that are not only diverse, but that originate from multiple substations and have multiple generators for maximized reliability. Water utility feeds should be similarly diverse. At the network level, data centers with optimal design should have multiple carriers built in for high levels of network redundancy and include dual entrances for all providers. Delivering all these measures in the design and physical structure comes at a cost, so it’s clear that if a provider offers these advantages, they’re truly investing in their customers.
If you are interested in learning more about Disaster Recovery for your organization or enterprise, please click here.
3. Data Center Scalability to Suit Any Evolving Need
Disaster recovery and business continuity needs are growing and changing by the day, so the data center and provider should be able to cater to that dynamic requirement. A highly scalable data center ensures that customers and their strategies can grow rapidly with extra space, power, bandwidth and services without costly and time consuming reconfigurations to infrastructure or operations. Assessing a provider’s ability to seamlessly manage and deliver both short-term and long-term support should be a priority.
4. Amenities that Go the Extra Mile
A provider that sees customers as more than just housed IT is the key element that brings all these geographic and structural considerations together and delivers them with enduring care and service excellence. Employees are the lifeblood of any organization, and they should be catered to as conscientiously as any IT equipment. This is why extra amenities that serve IT teams are a great way to gauge the client relationship style of a data center provider and how thoroughly it caters to not just customer needs, but customer comfort and productivity. This can include provisioning dedicated office space, ample parking, strategic proximity to public transport, hotels or restaurants, break rooms, or other amenities.
Data Foundry’s Houston 2 Data Center is a great example of how Data Foundry comprehensively meets enterprise disaster recovery and colocation needs, checking all the boxes and delivering a customer-oriented approach and high-touch service excellence.
If you are interested in learning more about our new Houston 2 Data Center, please click here.
Houston 2 is a 60MW, master-planned, state-of-the-art data center that, in addition to residing in a geographically strategic area that’s outside of the 500-year flood plain and features dense fiber connectivity, is backed by a 185mph wind rating and fully redundant power. Houston 2 offers dual underground, concrete-encased utility feeds, provisions 24x7x365 manned security, remains carrier neutral with 11+ on-net fiber carriers and more. Plus, just like Data Foundry’s entire portfolio of locations, Houston 2 ensures it meets the needs of IT teams as well as IT equipment by offering 60,000 square feet of dedicated, customizable office space and conference rooms so employees can work in comfort.
To learn more about Houston 2’s specifications and how they meet the disaster recovery demands of today and tomorrow, please click here.