A British Airways data center failure in 2017 caused flight delays, cancellations and lost luggage for 75,000 customers. The incident, which was caused by an engineer who didn’t follow proper procedure when disconnecting and reconnecting the power supply, cost the airline $75 million.

Gartner estimates that downtime costs organizations an average of $5,600 per minute and between $140,000 and $540,000 per hour. In addition to lost revenue and lost productivity, there are hard costs involved with restoring data and applications and investigating incidents. In some cases, lost data can’t be recovered at all. Of course, these problems often translate to a poor customer experience, which can scare away both existing customers and prospects.

To minimize the risk of costly downtime, organizations need a Disaster Recovery plan that ensures their IT infrastructure stays up and running. Increasingly, organizations are incorporating the services of a Colocation Facility into their disaster recovery plans.

A Colocation facility can be used to keep critical systems, applications and data protected and available. Just like any other IT investment, however, colocation facilities require significant research and planning, from both technical and business perspectives, in order to maximize their value.

Benefits of Colocation Facilities for Disaster Recovery

A colocation facility is a data center where multiple organizations house IT infrastructure and interconnect to various service providers. The colocation vendor will typically offer secure space where the customer can install and/or store equipment. 

From a disaster recovery perspective, a colocation facility can serve as:

• The primary data center site.

• A secondary disaster recovery or failover site for certain critical systems.

• A backup site for disaster recovery resources and mission-critical assets.

Colocation facilities enable tenants to share infrastructure resources, which means they also share the cost of those resources. This makes it feasible for organizations of all sizes to implement backup IT resources without the expense of building out a secondary data center.

Colocation facilities also provide a safe, secure location with access to multiple network service providers. With a colocation facility, you actually know the physical location of your assets and can often visit the space. The facility will have redundant power, cooling and connectivity services that reduce the risk of downtime. Colocation facilities are also scalable to meet growing IT demands.

Factors to Consider When Choosing a Colocation Facility

The monthly cost of a colocation facility includes not only physical space, but also power, cooling, physical security and other environmental considerations. Most colocation providers sell power in fixed increments, such as 5kW per rack of equipment, so consider how much equipment will need to be supported before you sign on the dotted line.

Some facilities bundle in the cost of network services and provide IT maintenance and management services. Find out what services are included and which ones cost extra. Your cost analysis should account for growth and the need for additional resources. 

When evaluating a colocation provider, you should evaluate the facility’s power and cooling systems, redundancy, and available connectivity options. What systems are in place to prevent the most common causes of downtime, including human error, network failure, power outages, natural disasters, and cybercrime? Find out about the physical security of the structure – video surveillance, access controls, management of approved personnel, etc. 

How Rahi Can Help

Rahi can partner with your organization to develop a disaster recovery strategy, determine if a colocation facility makes sense, and implement the right solutions. Contact us to help you determine the best path forward to protect your systems, applications and data minimize the risk of costly downtime.