What Is a Data Center Solution? A Quick Guide to Products and Services for Data Centers
On-premises (or on-prem) data center solutions involve storing and managing company data on-site.
Pros:
- Your team members can quickly access and control your IT infrastructure.
- You may be able to access and work with data faster when the data center is nearby.
- Storing data on-site is often cheaper than storing it elsewhere.
Cons:
- If all your data is in a single place, there is a single point of failure and limited redundancy. Any problems can lead to an excess risk of data corruption and loss.
- You may be reliant on a single source of connectivity. If there is an internet outage, you might not be able to access your data until the issue is resolved.
- Your facility will be fully responsible for storing and protecting the data, which may mean paying for extra security and durability precautions at your site. You will likely need 24/7 security, disaster remediation tools, waterless fire suppression systems, and more to protect your data.
- Your business will need to hire people with highly specific expertise to maintain and manage your infrastructure.
- Your business will need to replace expensive IT infrastructure, including server equipment, as it becomes obsolete over time.
Colocation Solutions
Colocation (colo) data center solutions involve setting up server equipment in a separately-owned data center that was specifically designed for IT infrastructure. These data centers are also called multi-tenant data centers (MTDCs) or colocation centers.
Pros:
- Colo data centers tend to be well-protected with highly resilient environments. The facility will likely plan for humidity, fire protection, cooling, redundant power, and other potential concerns. As a result, colocated servers tend to run more efficiently and last longer than on-premises servers.
- There is usually 24/7 physical security to make sure only designated people can access your equipment.
- Since colo data centers tend to have multiple internet providers and paths running through their facilities, you may be better connected and experience less downtime. If one provider is down, the data center can ensure the equipment switches over to another as a backup.
- The data center will be responsible for facility maintenance instead of you, the data owner.
Cons:
- Your business will still need to replace expensive IT infrastructure as it becomes obsolete over time.
- Your business will still be responsible for equipment maintenance. There are IT experts at colo data centers, but they are only responsible for keeping the facility itself running.
- Your data is farther away from your employees, although this can be a pro depending on what you want to do with your data.
Cloud Compute Solutions
Cloud compute solutions keep your data on a cloud computing provider’s distributed network. The cloud is a series of remote servers that maintain and process data on the internet rather than hosting it on a local server or computer
Pros:
- Cloud compute solutions are designed to be distributed.
- The facility the cloud server is housed in will be taken care of for you.
- Your business won’t need to worry about replacing obsolete server equipment.
- Cloud storage is very scalable and flexible, so you can easily add more storage, cores, or memory in a pinch.
Cons:
- With cloud compute solutions, you are outsourcing your infrastructure.
- Your organization may be at higher risk of large-scale attacks, although larger cloud entities tend to be more secure.
- You will need a lot of internet bandwidth to work with your data.
Hybrid Solutions
Hybrid data center solutions combine two or more of the solutions we discussed above. For example, you could house employee-facing data in a colocation center while your customer-facing data stays in a mix of private and public cloud servers.
Hybrid solutions also come with advantages and disadvantages, depending on the combination of solutions you choose. We recommend talking to a data center solutions provider to see which option may be right for your needs.
Why Your Business Needs Data Center Solutions
Data center solutions help organizations store sensitive data. If your organization is concerned about keeping data secure, avoiding downtime, or keeping IT infrastructure healthy, you likely need a data center solution.
A data center solutions provider can help you with designing a new data center, setting up and maintaining racks in an existing colo data center, or finding a good cloud compute solution.
Simple Helix Data Center Solutions
To give you an example of what data center solutions can look like in practice, let’s take a look at Simple Helix’s data center solutions.
Simple Helix has a Tier III equivalent, 2N+1 Data Center. Tier III means we can offer 72 hours of protection from power outages without resorting to an outside source, and we must keep uptime at a minimum of 99.982% of the time per annum. 2N+1 means we can have maintenance performed on one system while two others are up and running without disrupting the system.
The facility is designed to be carrier-neutral, which means our clients can enjoy extra resiliency and peace of mind if one carrier is down. The data is stored in disaster-protected pods which we monitor 24/7 with armed security guards, CCTV footage with 90-day backup, photo badge access with fob access tracking throughout the facility, and a K4-rated security fence.
We offer several colocation and cloud options for storage. We use the cloud environment to keep off-site, off-line backups of all your servers and data, including daily Office 365 backups and Endpoint Backups.
We also offer NOC+ services for monitoring networks and ensuring continuous uptime. We include added SOC capabilities with a Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solution that offers a holistic view of your organization’s information security.
