There are a whole host of factors to consider when choosing the right data centre for your business. Location should be high on the agenda. Choosing the right location comes with its own host of considerations, it’s more complex than simply finding the one closest to your office.
How would you get to your chosen site? What are the road and rail networks like? Imagine your new facility was in a busy city centre, how long would it take to get to the site in rush hour? And when you do get there and need to unload your kit, where would you park?
A Data Centre located inside a major city, such as London, can incur significant travel costs and time delays when accessing the site. If you have an urgent need to access business-critical infrastructure, time is pressing. The prospect of downtime for any business needs to be avoided at all costs, location should facilitate ease not hinder.
Geographical diversity is another factor to consider, especially if you are looking to place IT infrastructure in multiple facilities. Some industries dictate that their Primary and Disaster Recovery (DR) sites must offer geographical diversity for others it’s just best practice.
If you have to select a Data Centre that is located a significant distance from your offices or another existing Data Centre then this must be considered early during the selection process along with available connectivity options too.
If you do need a data centre that is further from your business base, ensure that considerations have been made to routine updates. Secure a partner that offers 24/7/365 Remote Hands, providing immediate ‘Eyes’ on the ground. They can carry out tasks in your absence however big or small such as server reboots, checking alarms, swapping a hard drive or even a cable patching check. This way, you don’t have to send someone out from your own team on a lengthy round trip at 3AM for a quick task.
A robust remote support service can enable a business to be more flexible with the geographical distance of their data centre. `
GDPR is still high on the agenda for many businesses and sets criteria around data location. Data sovereignty is a country-specific requirement where data collected and processed from one country must remain within its borders.
So, if your business (or that of your clients’) is affected by any data sovereignty concerns, check for the necessary compliance. This may include both geographic location and the ownership or registration of the data centre to be used. Sovereignty should also be checked with any additional services, such as backups, hosted storage and cloud solutions which may be included with your solution.
When you start considering the location of your data centre other factors start to come into the mix too. Connectivity; what connectivity options are available? Power infrastructure; is the data centre on a different grid feed to your offices (a DR requirement?) and if so what resilience does it have? No individual factor can be reviewed in isolation which is why it can soon become a complex decision.
Discover our selection of whitepapers, designed to help you understand all the key factors you should consider during the decision-making process. They are your guide to getting it right.
Our words of advice, take the time to do your research and conduct thorough due diligence. The right Data Centre will be able to guide you through this process and work with you to achieve the solution that is right for your business.
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