Green House Data Blog

Wyoming’s State-Level Economic Development Agency Chooses Wyoming Data Center to Host Website

2013-06-19T14:00:00+00:00

CHEYENNE, WY – June 19, 2013 – The Wyoming Business Council, the state’s economic development agency, has successfully moved its data storage and web hosting from an out-of-state provider back to Wyoming. The Business Council chose Green House Data, a VMware® vCloud Powered partner, and cloud hosting leader, to provide managed cloud services that power content across the organization’s web and mobile sites.

“We were very happy to be able to work with Green House Data on a data storage solution for our website,” said Business Council CEO Bob Jensen. “Green House Data not only met our technical requirements, but it also shares our core values of creating an even more prosperous Wyoming and is one of many examples of Wyoming’s booming technology industry.”

Located in Cheyenne, Wyo., the mission of the Business Council is to facilitate the economic growth of Wyoming through strategic economic development including business retention and recruitment. At www.wyomingbusiness.org, users can stream video, interact with soci al media, and access information on a 24/7 basis, and find out more information.

“The Wyoming Business Council is a leader in the community and across the state,” said Shawn Mills, president of Green House Data. “We are proud to help them meet their goals of growing businesses throughout Wyoming.”

About the Wyoming Business Council

The mission of the Business Council is to facilitate the economic growth of Wyoming. The Business Council, a state government agency, concentrates its efforts on providing assistance for existing Wyoming companies and start-ups, helping communities meet their development and diversification needs, and recruiting new firms and industries targeted to complement the state’s assets. For more information, please visit www.wyomingbusiness.org.

About About Green House Data

Green House Data is a cloud hosting and colocation services provider with highly energy efficient, green data centers located across the country. The company helps its clients reduce the pressure that comes with lower IT budgets and increasingly high demands. Green House Data is a certified VMware service provider, SSAE 16 – Type II and HIPAA compliant, as well as an EPA Green Power Partner. Visit the website, www.greenhousedata.com, to learn more, view demos, or request a free cloud trial.

6 Reasons Why Archiving to the Cloud is a Smart Idea

2013-06-12T14:00:00+00:00

Storing and managing massive amounts of data – such as email or electronic records – has become a huge challenge for organizations. Not only does the information need to be easily retrievable, but data retention policies often require you to archive it for a number of years.

The cloud is a great environment for archiving since it’s instantly scalable, cost-effective, and virtually maintenance-free. Here are six smart reasons to move your archiving from on-premise to the cloud:

1. Less Expensive and a Better ROI than On-Premise Archiving. Maintaining a private archive infrastructure is costly and IT management-intensive. Since archiving is inherently a long-term operation, multiple hardware refreshes will be required throughout the lifecycle of your data, support contracts need to be maintained, and your IT staff will spend a great deal of time managing the hardware, software, and archived information.

By contrast, cloud archiving offers many choices about how and where archives are hosted. The cloud doesn’t require you to purchase or maintain servers or the infrastructure to house and cool them. Your service provider will be able to provide the technology infrastructure for you, as well as offering different levels of services.

2. Quickly Add More Storage Without Purchasing Additional Hardware. Archived data, by its very nature, is always expanding. Depending on your company’s data retention requirements, you’ll need a storage mechanism that scales easily. The cloud is perfect since it accommodates an unlimited amount of storage without requiring the purchase of additional hardware. Just let your center service provider know that you need more space for your archives, and they can quickly update your infrastructure.

3. Fast Deployment. Since the cloud doesn’t require you to buy and configure hardware, your archiving system can be operational fast. That makes the barriers to entry very low for companies that want to test out cloud archiving and see how it works.

4. Easy to Find Specific Information – Fast. One of the biggest challenges with archiving is finding the information you need quickly without sifting through reams of data. Cloud-based archiving solutions have intelligent search functionality which makes this a simple task.

This search functionality is critical, for example, if your company is subpoenaed and given a short timeframe to produce all emails related to a particular subject. Reviewing multiple physical backup tapes is tedious and time-consuming and often requires an IT administrator’s expertise. With the cloud, archives can be searched in a matter of seconds by anyone with the appropriate credentials and a web browser.

5. Assists with Regulatory Compliance. Many companies, regardless of industry, need to satisfy requirements for regulatory mandates, like HIPAA or PCI-DSS, including adhering to specific data retention rules. If your company’s compliance is called into question, courts and lawyers may require you to quickly produce specific documents and emails. As mentioned previously, the cloud makes it easy to find that specific information.

6. Minimal Maintenance. One of the benefits of using cloud-based archiving is the maintenance your IT team will need to perform is minimal. Your data center service provider takes care of purchasing, configuring, refreshing, and managing the hardware. This frees up your team to work on more strategic technology projects. In addition, service providers offer physical and network security that individual organizations, short of building their own data centers, can not usually match.

Green House Data to Participate in Department of Treasury & Small Business Administration Roundtable

2013-06-10T14:54:00+00:00

CHEYENNE, WYOMING – June 10, 2013 – Green House Data, a VMware vCloud Pow-ered partner and leader in infrastructure services including cloud hosting and colocation, today announced company president Shawn Mills will represent the com-pany at the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the U.S. Small Business Administration Capital Access Innovation Summit.

The Summit will feature panels and breakout sessions reviewing opportunities to strengthen capital formation for start-ups and small businesses. Conference focus are-as include public and private capital market access, data innovation and new financial technology, and support for small business growth by large corporations. Summit par-ticipants will include entrepreneurs, corporate executives, lenders, investors, government officials, and academics.

A founding executive of Green House Data, Mills has a deep background in the tech-nology industry, with expertise in product and business development and go-to-market strategy.

“I’m honored to participate this year’s summit,” said Mills. “Green House Data has seen tremendous growth—nearly doubling year-over-year—and with the help of the Small Business Administration and the Wyoming Business Council, we been able to invest in equipment and facilities to keep pace with demand for our services.”

Though traditional data centers require a great deal of electricity for power and cooling, Green House Data has been able to leverage efficient design, Cheyenne's natural cli-mate, and Wyoming's competitive energy costs to minimize energy expenditure. In addition, the company purchases wind energy credits to offset electricity use compa-ny-wide and is a Top 150 EPA Green Power Partner. Green House Data breaks ground this year on a new 35,000 square foot facility in Cheyenne that will allow for even more growth and the continued addition of high paying jobs in the community.

The Summit will take place in Washington, DC on June 10th, 2013. Speakers and panel-ists confirmed on the agenda include:

Karen Mills, Administrator, Small Business Association
Gene Sperling, Director, National Economic Council
Matt Rutherford, Assistant Secretary for Financial Markets
Scott Case, CEO, Startup America
Rosie Rios, United States Treasurer

About Green House Data
Green House Data is a cloud hosting and colocation services provider with highly en-ergy efficient, green data centers located across the country. The company helps its clients reduce the pressure that comes with lower IT budgets and increasingly high demands. Green House Data is a certified VMware service provider, SSAE 16 Type II and HIPAA compliant, as well as an EPA Green Power Partner. Visit the website, www.GreenHouseData.com, to learn more, view demos, or request a free cloud trial.

The Other Data Center Tiers: Not Facilities, but Performance

2013-06-06T22:50:00+00:00

The word “tier” is used frequently in the context of data centers. As we explained in a previous blog post, data center facilities are ranked by Tier depending on their infrastructure and redundancy. But tiers are also used to describe the resources and infrastructure of a virtual machine or server, and are often mentioned in billing or deployment. This post aims to clear up any remaining confusion over the two types of tiers.

When deploying a new virtual machine or application, developers often use “tiers”, each geared for different performance or storage types depending on the expected audience and usage. In the case of Green House Data, Tier 1 is connected to Fibre Channel SAN, Tier 2 is SATA SAN, and Tier 3 is Isilon NAS. All storage tiers are RAID 5 configured. These tiers allow IT deployments based on performance needs. For example, development and test environments can be built on Tier 3 NAS infrastructure, while client-facing production environments can be deployed on Tier 1 Fibre Channel SAN. In combination with a pay for use billing cycle, this strategy can considerably lower the cost of infrastructure deployment cycles.

Developers and system administrators may design their own tier systems depending on the project at hand, customizing the operating system, development tools, routing systems and network settings appropriately. A new application might feature a front-end tier with load balancing for users, a middle application tier that runs the app, and a back-end tier loaded with a database, for example.

These deployment tiers are quite different from the facility rank tiers we previously discussed. Check out our previous post for an in-depth assessment of how facilities are ranked Tier I – Tier IV. Have you seen “tier” used in any other data center context? If so, let us know!

Posted By: Joe Kozlowicz

fifteenfortyseven Critical Systems Realty and Green House Data Partner to Develop New Data Center

2013-06-05T14:35:00+00:00

Cheyenne, WY and Matawan, NJ - June 5, 2013 – fifteenfortyseven Critical Systems Realty, LLC (1547) and Green House Data announce today their partnership to develop a new state-of-the-art datacenter facility in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The 35,000 sq. ft., five (5) Megawatt, concurrently-maintainable facility is designed to house wholesale, retail and cloud colocation services for high-power density customers. This new facility will join Green House Data’s existing 10,000 sq. ft. facility to form the nucleus of a planned, multi-building datacenter campus.

The first phase of this project will kick off immediately and is scheduled to be completed by the end of the first quarter of 2014. The facility will boast 100 gigabit per second (Gbps) network capacity with redundancy across four network carriers and low latency to the major datacenter hubs in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Dallas. This initial build will make available an additional 5,000 sq. ft. of configurable and ready-to-lease space.

“This new datacenter is ideal for organizations from either coast who need to incorporate safe locations into their disaster recovery and business continuity planning," states Shawn Mills, President, Green House Data. “With this expansion, we will be able to offer the business community across the central regions a secure, efficient, state-of-the-art datacenter that combines a unique climate with strategic access to the key data center hubs in the US.”

Formed in 2007, Green House Data has been providing high performance, secure, and reliable cloud hosting and colocation services in the Cheyenne market to customers around the world. Committed to sustainability, the company powers its infrastructure with 100% renewable energy, including wind and solar, and its facilities utilize Wyoming’s characteristically cool and dry climate for the use of outside ambient air for cooling year-round. In partnership with 1547, this high-power, high bandwidth datacenter has been designed to operate at a very high efficiency rating.

Wyoming’s central location offers protection from natural disasters, providing Green House Data’s cloud and colocation clients with a uniquely secure environment for both primary infrastructure and disaster recovery. This, coupled with abundant and reliable power, is ideal for datacenters. With over 10 acres of adjacent land available and 1547’s expertise in custom datacenter design, development, and operation, the facility is well positioned for further development.

“We are excited to be working with Shawn and his team to help expand upon the existing infrastructure for customers’ growing network continuity needs,” continues Corey Welp, Managing Partner, 1547. “Through our partnership, we are committed to continuing to develop the Wyoming technology landscape and to further grow Cheyenne’s market reach as a premier datacenter location.”

About fifteenfortyseven Critical Systems Realty
fifteenfortyseven Critical Systems Realty (1547) was formed by executives from a premier national datacenter construction firm and select executives from both the financial services and datacenter industries, to capitalize on unique, tenant-driven datacenter opportunities. The ownership team has over 25 years of combined experience owning, building, and managing datacenters. Through their extensive industry relationships, 1547 is able to focus on acquisition and development projects where datacenter users specifically drive demand and are most active. For more information, visit http://1547realty.com/.

About Green House Data
Green House Data is a cloud hosting and colocation services provider with highly energy efficient, green data centers located across the country. The company helps its clients reduce the pressure that comes with lower IT budgets and increasingly high demands. Green House Data is a certified VMware service provider, SSAE 16 – Type II and HIPAA compliant, as well as an EPA Green Power Partner. Visit the website, www.greenhousedata.com, to learn more, view demos, or request a free cloud trial.

For media enquiries, contact:
Jaymie Scotto & Associates
+1 866 695 3629
pr@jaymiescotto.com

4 Security Best Practices for the Cloud

2013-05-30T14:00:00+00:00

It’s critical to secure your company data and systems to protect them from ever-present cyber-thieves. With more data continuing to move to the cloud, those services become attractive targets and attacks will increase. Here are four best practices for ensuring your important information is protected, including how to augment your data center service provider’s security and how to evaluate their security controls.

1. Realize your IT department still plays a critical role in securing data. It’s easy to assume that since you’re using a data center provider, they’ll also cover all your security needs. While any good provider should have air-tight security procedures such as controlling physical access to the data center and network security like firewalls and intrusion detection, your IT department still plays an important role in securing your data.

Your IT team will need to manage and secure your cloud services using proper management of passwords, backup policies, access control strategies, and monitoring. For example, your provider should be encrypting their data center’s network, but you’ll need use your own security tools to encrypt sensitive information before it goes to the cloud. And you’ll need to setup and manage anti-virus software to check incoming emails for malware or other potential threats. When it comes to security, it may be helpful to remember that cloud-based applications hosted at a data center should be secured in the same manner as applications on internal servers.

2. Put your low-risk, non-core functions in the cloud first. When you’re just starting with the cloud, it’s a good idea to migrate non-essential functions first. This strategy minimizes risk and gives you time to optimize processes before moving more mission critical applications, processes, or business areas to the cloud.

Some companies choose to move productivity and collaboration tools, like email and software test and dev environments to the cloud first. After they gain success in those areas, they stage the rollout of additional, more critical functions.

3. Evaluate potential cloud providers and their SLAs carefully. Not all data centers are created equal and neither are their Service Level Agreements (SLAs). The SLA contract spells out exactly what levels of security and service you can expect from your provider.

It’s important to examine the agreement carefully and look for holes. Ask questions such as:

Where will my data be stored? Will it be spread across multiple sites or across country borders?
What level of security will the provider offer? Do they guarantee that level of support?
How quickly will you be notified if security issues occur?
Can you add hooks into the provider’s monitoring software so you can view issues from your enterprise monitoring dashboard?
What happens to your data if you terminate the provider’s service?

If you don’t like the answers you’re getting from a provider, move on until you find one who satisfies your requirements. Security is too important to be left to chance.

4. Understand a potential provider’s standard audits and certifications. Check the audits and certifications of the data center, such as SSAE 16 Type II, HIPAA, or ISO 27011, to determine if there are any potential security gaps that might compromise your systems or data. Do they meet compliance regulations that are relevant to your company like Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), HIPAA, PCI, or Gramm-Leach-Bliley (GLB)?

Be sure you’re satisfied the provider has taken every necessary step to meet stringent security and regulatory standards. It’s not enough to look at a bulleted list of a data center’s standards and certificates – examine the audit documentation they provide. Are there any potential gaps that could compromise your data?

If your company requires tight controls due to your industry or government regulations, will the data center work with you to satisfy them? It’s important to ask, because with changing governmental regulations, your industry may be subjected to compliance requirements down the road that you can’t anticipate now. It’s important to know if a provider is willing to grow with you.

Implementing these best practices will go a long way in protecting your organization’s important data and systems. Learn more about secure cloud hosting.

Data Center Tiers Explained: The Great Raised Floor Debate

2013-05-21T14:00:00+00:00

Many data centers advertise themselves as a specific Tier, based on a scale from I – IV. But these classes are generally poorly defined and in many cases misused. Case in point: Green House Data recently exhibited at an industry event in Denver. A man walked up to the table and started asking about the company’s data centers.

“You guys are up in Cheyenne, right?” he said, “What kind of facility? Tier II? Tier III?”

“We’re Tier III, yes,” I replied. “99.9% availability.”

“Raised floors?” he continued. I shook my head.

“It has to have raised floors to be Tier III,” the man said with certainty.

In actuality, raised floors are only required in some circles. Different accreditations use extremely similar tiers, with several key differences. This blog aims to set the record straight, spelling out what is included in each tier from two major accreditation organizations.

The two main data center tier classifications were developed by the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) and the Uptime Institute (UI). Each uses Tier I, II, III and IV to describe various levels of reliability and infrastructure design in the data center, but they diverge in several key ways. The basic idea, however, remains the same: an enterprise-class data center must be designed with redundant components and backup systems in order to avoid downtime, even during maintenance periods.

The Uptime Institute consists of a group of companies who perform IT services and consulting for the data center industry. They first created their Tier system in 1995. TIA was formed in 1988, born from other telecommunications industry organizations stretching back to 1923. They released their Telecommunications Infrastructure Standards for Data Centers in 2005. Both standards stipulate some other requirements for cabling, floor layout and more, but the main points align nicely:

Class	TIA-942 Standard	Uptime Institute Standard
Tier I	99.671% availability susceptible to disruptions from planned or unplanned activity single path for power and cooling distribution N+0 – no redundancy May or may not have a raised floor, UPS or generator Annual downtime of 28.8 hours Must be completely shut down for maintenance	Susceptible to disruptions from planned or unplanned activity Single path for power and cooling distribution N+0 – no redundancy Includes a generator and UPS for outages and power spikes, with 12 hours of generator fuel minimum Must be completely shut down for maintenance
Tier II	99.741% availability Less susceptible to disruption from planned/unplanned activity Single path for power and cooling N+1 – includes redundant components Includes raised floor, UPS and generator Annual downtime of 22 hours Maintenance of power path and backbone may require shutdown	Less susceptible to disruption from planned/unplanned activity Single path for power and cooling distribution N+1 components including generators, UPS, energy storage, chillers, heat rejection, pumps, cooling and fuel tanks Includes UPS and generator with 12 hours of fuel Redundant components can be removed for maintenance without disruption, but distribution path maintenance may require shutdown
Tier III - Concurrently Maintainable	99.982% availability Normal activity will not disrupt critical operations, but unplanned events could still cause disruption Multiple power and cooling distribution paths with only one active at one time N+1 redundancy Annual downtime of 1.6 hours Includes raised floor and ability to maintain full operation while performing maintenance on power path or backbone	Normal activity will not disrupt critical operations, but unplanned activity/human error may Multiple distribution paths for power and cooling with only one active at any one time N+1 redundancy All IT equipment is dual-powered or features transfer devices Includes UPS and generator with 12 hours of fuel for every “N” capacity Can maintain full operation with any component of distribution path removed for maintenance
Tier IV - Fault Tolerant	99.995% availability Normal activity does not disrupt critical operations, can experience at least one unplanned event with no impact Multiple power and cooling distribution paths 2(N+1) redundancy – 2 UPS each with N+1 Annual downtime of 0.4 hours Includes raised floor and ability to maintain full operation during maintenance	Normal activity does not disrupt critical operations, can experience failure of any component with no impact Multiple power and cooling distribution paths that are independent, diverse and simultaneously active N+1 redundancy with physical separation Continuous cooling required UPS and generators required with 12 hours of fuel for “N” capacity Each and every component can be removed from service for maintenance without affecting critical systems

The two class systems look quite similar, with a main difference being those tricky raised floors, which can be a source of debate among data center designers. In the past, raised floors were the preferred method. They solved a number of issues including:

cooling and air distribution
management of bulky cables
copper grounding grid
location to run utility piping

In many modern cases a raised floor can actually cause extra problems. Cooling is still a major focus for data centers, but new standards like hot/cold aisle containment and new high efficiency air chillers placed close to IT cabinets have eliminated the need for raised floors as a cooling method. In fact, the increased wattage of modern IT equipment necessitates a raised floor of 1m or more in many cases, dramatically increasing the cost and considerations needed for a raised floor implementation. Cables are much smaller than they once were and can be run across the ceiling, where they are also easier to access. Ground shift is no longer much of an issue, and direct cold water piping is no longer necessary. Utility pipes can also be run overhead. Earthquake/disaster resiliency, headroom, fire codes, decreased security, cleaning and increased cost are all deterrents to a raised floor system.

Raised floors serve as just one example of the fast moving data center world, where yesterday’s best practices become today’s legacy nonsense. While a raised floor solution can still provide an effective and secure Tier IV data center, they aren’t necessary to achieve the highest rating.

Green House Data is proud to be a concurrently maintainable Tier III data center with 99.9% availability, but the company also recognizes that the only way to be truly fault tolerant is to stay on top of the latest trends in design and technology and to maintain constant vigilance through monitoring and security measures.

Read more about data center tiers and raised floors:

http://www.adckrone.com/in/en/library/brochures/Enterprise/datacentre/TIA-942%20data%20Center%20standards%20Overview.pdf

http://uptimeinstitute.com/publications#Tier-Classification

http://www.apcdistributors.com/white-papers/Racks%20and%20Physical%20Infrastructure/WP-19%20Re-examining%20the%20Suitability%20of%20the%20Raised%20Floor%20for%20Data%20Center%20Applications.pdf

5 Reasons to Use the Cloud as a Primary Infrastructure

2013-05-16T14:00:00+00:00

Your business may already be using some cloud-based applications, such as Salesforce.com or Dropbox, and maybe you’re contemplating moving even more of your infrastructure to the cloud. There are definite benefits of a cloud-based infrastructure including flexibility, guaranteed performance SLAs, regulatory compliance, shifting CapEx costs to the OpEx budget, and, depending on what type of data center service provider you choose, a greener footprint.

Here are five positive aspects of making the cloud your primary technology infrastructure:

1. It’s Dynamic and Instantly Scalable. One of the most challenging aspects to maintaining an on-premise system or an enterprise private cloud is accounting for fluctuating bandwidth needs. If you operate a seasonal business, for instance, and web traffic is higher at peak times and lower at others, you’ll need to buy, configure, and maintain ready-to-go hardware that can be brought online immediately if traffic spikes.
By using a cloud infrastructure that’s hosted by a data center, your provider can “burst” or dynamically increase your bandwidth whenever traffic suddenly jumps. Your service provider takes care of everything on their side and seamlessly increases your system’s capacity to handle more traffic.

2. SLAs for Guaranteed Uptime. Service Level Agreements (SLAs) spell out exactly what level of service you can expect from your data center provider including percentage of uptime, what will happen if you experience downtime while using their services, and more. Reliable data centers will guarantee 99.99% uptime. It can be challenging for most companies to hit 99.99% uptime within their own enterprise networks.

In the event a data center provider doesn’t hit its uptime guarantee, the SLA should provide financial compensation to you. This gives providers great incentive to have redundant networks, power and cooling in place and in-depth plans for quickly restoring service in the rare event it’s interrupted.

3. Satisfy Expensive and Time-Consuming Compliance Standards. Many companies need to satisfy compliance standards like HIPAA, PCI-DSS and others in order to meet regulatory requirements. This can be an expensive and time-consuming process. In most cases, you’ll need to hire an auditing company to evaluate if you’ve adequately followed every required step to satisfy the compliance requirements.

By using a data center service provider that’s already certified for these standards, you’ll save your company time and money. The data center will take on the burden of hiring auditors to certify their processes, equipment, and systems. While you may still need to take additional steps to maintain internal systems, using infrastructure that is technically compliant goes a long way towards meeting major compliance requirements.

4. Reduced CapEx. When your company buys hardware and software for its private infrastructure, these expenses normally hit the Capital Expenditures (CapEx) budget. Often this budget is tougher to increase and goes through more approval processes than the Operating Expenses (OpEx) budget. Generally, CapEx budgets are determined annually and if the budget is depleted, departments must wait until the next fiscal year. By contrast, OpEx budgets—which also include items like salaries and office rent—are usually much more fluid.

By using a cloud provider for your primary infrastructure, you’ll be billed a flat service rate each month which can be treated as an operating expense rather than a capital expense. For CIO’s who are balancing expenses against the need for infrastructure to grow, avoiding budgetary spikes triggered by major hardware purchases can be one way to keep spending predictable and get around budgets that may be frozen.

Another advantage of using a cloud service provider is you can re-allocate your existing unused hardware resources as a failover or backup infrastructure in case of an emergency.

5. Lower Your Carbon Footprint at a Great Price. As green technology becomes more common, data center service providers are changing their infrastructure to reduce their carbon footprints. Data centers specifically designed for energy efficiencies utilize 40% less energy and often are powered through entirely renewable resources like wind energy.

Green data centers also extensively use virtualization technologies to lower energy consumption. Virtualization is a more efficient use of resources as less hardware is needed which, in turn, reduces cooling and energy consumption.
When you use a green data center, your company’s carbon foot print is also reduced. And don’t automatically assume if a data center is green, then it’s also expensive. Using the right green technology can be very cost-effective for data centers. Responsible providers will pass these savings on to their customers.

Learn more about how to get started with secure cloud hosting.

Green House Data Among Top 10 US Cloud Providers By Availability

2013-05-14T14:00:00+00:00

CHEYENNE, WY - Green House Data was named the 8th best United States cloud provider in terms of availability in a recent article on ReadWrite. The data came from Compuware’s CloudSleuth service, which monitors the current status of cloud providers across the globe, with rankings including response time and availability.

Data center availability is a measurement of uptime and a crucial aspect of many Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Basically, any downtime at a data center decreases its overall availability percentage. At CloudSleuth, availability is a percentage of successful test transactions out of total attempted test transactions.

Green House Data made the Top 10 Cloud Providers by Availability for 2012, taking the number 8 spot over Amazon EC2. At the time of this post, Green House Data’s Newark facility is the eighth fastest provider for response time in North America, too. You can view the real-time statistics here.

The ReadWrite article points out that “flyover states rock”, with most of the top providers located in the Midwest. Smaller ‘boutique’ providers also fared better in the rankings. Everyone at Green House Data is proud to have built some of the fastest, most available data center facilities in the region. The goal for 2013? Break into the Top 10 Average Response Time. Based on our current rank, we think we have a pretty good shot.

IT Executives’ Top Concerns about Hybrid Cloud Computing

2013-05-08T14:00:00+00:00

Interview with Cortney Thompson, VP, Operations & Founder at Green House Data

Although IT executives like the benefits of hybrid clouds, they also have concerns about application and data security. IDG Research found 47% of IT executives are considering investing in hybrid clouds, because they can scale up or down quickly based on bandwidth needs. However, they’re also very concerned about hybrid cloud security issues like data loss or leakage (78%), insecure interfaces and APIs (77%), and account or service hijacking (76%) .

To get an insider’s view about these issues, we interviewed Cortney Thompson, Green House Data Vice President of Operations for his thoughts.

Q: Why do companies choose to deploy hybrid clouds as compared to public or private clouds? What benefits do hybrid clouds offer?

Cortney: Hybrid clouds have some great benefits including the ability to scale fast based on bandwidth demands. For example, if you’re in a seasonal industry, like online retailing, you likely need more bandwidth capacity during the holiday season but not so much the rest of the year. Hybrid clouds let you quickly and affordably scale to satisfy those peak times.

With an in-house private cloud, you’d need to buy additional server hardware to handle the holiday shopping demand which would sit idle the rest of the year. Private clouds normally can’t scale, plus you don’t get the same degree of control over data and applications as with a hybrid cloud. Hybrid clouds really combine the best of public and private clouds.

Q: Why are IT executives often more concerned about security and integration with hybrid clouds than public clouds?

Cortney: I compare it to watching your kid go off to college – there’s always concern over what will happen when they’re out of your sight. Same with the cloud – IT executives realize they’re giving up a level of control when they move their data and systems to it. In reality, though, it’s like sending your kid to a college with an armed guard outside the door; a good data center service provider has a lot of infrastructure in place to protect you.

For instance, your data center should provide you with a secure environment for your hybrid cloud. That means ensuring physical access to the data center is monitored and controlled 24/7, network security is top-notch, and industry and regulatory certifications like HIPAA, PCI DSS, or other standards are met or, in Green House Data’s case, exceeded.

Integration issues can be challenging especially for companies using legacy software that’s not cloud-friendly. This often happens with older databases that aren’t setup to be load balanced. In cases like these, we advise clients on the best way to optimize their infrastructure. In most situations, it’s easier and less expensive to start with new software that’s cloud optimized. We work with lots of different software applications and hardware so we can give advice on what will work best for your particular situation.

Q: What can IT executives do to alleviate security concerns over data loss or leakage, insecure interfaces and APIs, and account or service hijacking?

Cortney: Most companies seem to assume that all the problems and issues they had with on-premise solutions will disappear when they move to the cloud. There are still security concerns with the cloud, though, which means you need a protection plan in place.

You still need a disaster recovery plan, for instance, and a way to quickly get your business back up and running if disaster strikes. Your IT team needs a plan for backing up your hard drives and important data – that type of due diligence doesn’t change when you move to the cloud.

At Green House Data, we always use trusted, well-known software and hardware providers for our infrastructure, because we know they really work. We also spend time with our clients educating them on how the cloud can help and recommending steps for migrating to the cloud. It’s important to us that we give customers a “level of comfort” about their data and services.

Learn more about secure cloud hosting.