Someone asked if they should build a data center or co-locate their equipment somewhere and what the risks and decision making criteria are.

My answer:

I’ve done both, multiple times…

Frankly, the only criteria advice I can give you is this: If it isn’t core to your business, or you don’t have some financial, security, or legal requirement to build, then don’t build it.

Data center providers typically “do it better”, since it’s core to -their- business model. Many of them are also SAS-70 Type II certified, something which may or may not be of interest to you if you’re worried about risk mitigation.

Risks are plenty, luckily, if you choose to implement a data center, there are lots of other people that have gone before you that have figured out that secret sauce. Power, climate control, green aspects/emissions, load testing, redundancy — the works — are all vital ingredients. If you’re going to go ahead with a data center build, hire a professional company with experience.

Check out the links I’ve attached for some interesting articles and information. CDCDG is a group I’ve worked with in the past and recommend. EYP who does great design work for datacenters has recently been purchased by HP. I’ve also worked with Perot systems (EDS.) They do great work, and are probably one of the most “certified” design groups you’ll find.

My opinion: If it’s not core to your business, don’t do it! If you do it better than anyone else, you should be selling it!

Reference links given were:
California Data Center Design Group
Data Center Dynamics
EYP, now HP

This entry was posted on Monday, October 13th, 2008 at 5:51 pm and is filed under IT General, Articles, Q&A.