CIOs have used outsource data centers for years to drive higher uptime and reap the benefits of lower data center capital costs. Now, many companies are using outsource data center facilities to keep compliance costs under control.

Physical security is one of the main data center compliance benefits that outsource data centers provide. Outsource data center facilities employ multiple levels of physical security to meet state and federal regulations. It’s usually less costly to “rent” the physical security than to build physical security and managing the ongoing physical security costs in-house.

Some data center compliance centers around service levels, or uptime. High reliability for enterprise computer systems can only be achieved in “mission critical facilities” that employ N+1 data center power redundancy and other tier IV data center characteristics. Service levels of 99.995% uptime (27 minutes of downtime per year or less) can be be found in affordable colocation facilities. The cost of building an enterprise data center with similar levels of data center uptime usually reaches into the millions, even for a small facility.

Data center compliance pressures are coming from vendors and clients as well. Many companies now require that vendors and clients operate SAS 70 data centers, TIA 942 compliant data centers, tier III or tier IV data centers. The cost of maintaining these certifications alone can pay for outsource colocation facilities.

Would it make more sense for your organization to use compliance-centered outsource data center facilities rather than building and maintaining your own? Call the data center compliance experts to learn more.

“The only measure that counts in the long run is how compliant you are,” he writes. “That’s what will determine the success of Cloud. Don’t believe me? Look at how the leading vendors in Cloud are responding today to their biggest (potential) customers — taking the ‘one size fits all’ model of mass-market Cloud and beginning to chop it up and create one-off’s in order to satisfy…compliance.”

more of the Data Center Knowledge article from Rich Miller

While energy efficiency gains in processors have slowed the growth in energy density, the trend is still moving upwards. As energy densities rise, so does the volume of chilled air required to keep the equipment cool. More fans may be added and the fans may need to run faster to get sufficient air flow to keep equipment cool.

Schmidt says data centers with computer room air conditioning systems – especially those that have moved to using larger air handlers to cope with higher heat densities — could save considerable energy by moving to water. “Fans are power pigs,” he says, noting that energy use increases as a cubed function of fan speed.

more of the ComputerWorld article from Robert L. Mitchell

Gulfport Municipal Court streamlined its infrastructure after Hurricane Katrina destroyed numerous court documents, investing in a digital imaging solution and storing data in multiple sites to prevent such a disastrous loss from ever happening again.

When Hurricane Katrina roared its murderous path into Mississippi and Louisiana in August 2005, the howling winds and punishing rains destroyed lives, homes and businesses—and temporarily blinded Lady Justice in Gulfport, Miss.

The storm, which caused more than 1,800 deaths and more than $81 billion in damages nationwide, tore the roof off the Gulfport Municipal Court, water-logging files and destroying the walls that housed them. Years of supporting documentation in criminal and civil complaints became sodden and illegible.

more of the Baseline article from Alison Diana

Predicting those that are not going to fail could be a tall task. Impressive facilities and row after row of storage and servers are not really a great indicator. The only real gauge should be how long have they been in the business of storing or processing external customer information. With few exceptions anything more than a few years of experience is all you are going to find. That means you need to take further steps.

Failure of the organization is not the only reason to get your data out of the cloud. What if the cloud provider’s data protection practices are weak and they loose data that can’t be recovered? Sure you can take legal action but if your data is gone, its gone. What if your business relationship sours, or you suddenly can’t afford to use the service. Your organization may also be purchased by an organization that is not using the same cloud services as you or may not use cloud services at all. You may very quickly need to roll out the service internally or move to another service.

more of the Information Week article from George Crump

Data centre security remains a critical issue for both end-user organizations and data centre and managed service providers, achieving top ranking alongside availability/resilience of data centre based IT services.

‘Data Centre Security, Current Practices and Customer Needs in Data Centre Security Specification and Operation’ is based on primary research including an end user survey, a survey of service providers, and interviews with end-users, vendors, service providers and industry experts. It also incorporates information from a wide range of sources covering physical, logical and people-related security measures.

The threat landscape is changing; one operator interviewed recorded 170-200 distributed denial of service (DDoS) events every two weeks. Of these, around one every week would be “a very large concerted DDoS attack”. Enterprises interviewed revealed their key concerns, but the report overall does provide evidence that a level of confidence in security standards is being achieved by most data centres.

more of the Continuity Central Article

The AFCOM association recently revealed the results of a survey of 436 data center sites that showed the following trends: Cyber terrorism is an increasing concern, mainframe deployment is declining, storage deployment is increasing, and “green” technologies are definitely happening.

AFCOM found that there is a shift in data centers away from mainframe computers and toward other types of servers.

That makes total sense as virtualization is the mantra of the day for those companies that are interested in optimizing their power by having several operating systems function within just one server.

Data processing and storage is done within one server as opposed to a traditional system where the network is distributed in an elaborate design comprising of several servers and workstations all attached to their own separate hardware components.

more of the Cloud Computing Journal article from Dilip Tinnelvelly

Down economy or not, IT managers have never had a blank check with which to meet an organization’s needs. As time goes on, IT managers have to deal with increased demand for computing and information services, all while being asked to cut costs and create grater justification for expenditures.

One of the areas IT departments are asked to cut back in is operational costs for their data centers. There are a few steps involved in reducing data center costs while maintaining the kinds of service levels your organziation has come to know and expect:

1. Look at Energy Management. One of the areas most data centers can reduce costs in is the area of energy management. You can set the temperature of your data center to 24 degrees Celsius, in most cases. Another way to reduce your energy costs is to use outside air to cool the data center, as blowing in outside air is much less expensive than air conditioning. Even implementing a server-based energy management solution will save you significant money in the long run.

more of the SOA World article

Hospital data centers may not be ready for the demand that more patients and digital information will create, according to a survey of hospital IT executives at small and midsize hospitals in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, China, France and Germany conducted by HIMSS Analytics on behalf of Dell.

The Healthcare Enterprise Survey showed that while many of the health care centers anticipate increased spending on IT next year, they also describe data center challenges including a lack of standards, security, extended server refresh cycles, and complexity created by a large number of servers and vendors and limited use of virtualization.

Dell officials say the lack of data center standards complicate the information sharing within and between hospitals necessary for diagnosis, decision making, and coordination and management of patient care. With refresh cycles of five years or more, small and midsize hospitals rely on servers that are less efficient and cost more to run and manage as they prepare for a significant increase in data over the next two years

more of the eWeek article from Roy Mark

But it can’t assure availability of your network. The Rackspace outage late last year was allegedly caused by a peering issue.

You know, a network, problem.

UPDATE: “The issues resulted from a problem with a router used for peering and backbone connectivity located outside the data center at a peering facility, which handles approximately 20% of Rackspace’s Dallas traffic,” Rackspace said in an incident report on its blog. “The problems stemmed from a configuration and testing procedure made at our new Chicago data center, creating a routing loop between the Chicago and Dallas data centers. This activity was in final preparation for network integration between the Chicago and Dallas data centers. The network integration of the facilities was scheduled to take place during the monthly maintenance window outside normal business hours, and today’s incident occurred during final preparations.”

We spend so much time worrying about application availability that we often overlook – both purposefully and accidentally – one of the most basic facts on which applications are built today: the existence of a working, reliable core network.

more of the Cloud Computing Journal article from Lori MacVittie