5 Top Tips to Think About When Selecting a Colocation Data Centre

Your choice of a data centre can make or break the organisation’s activities. Of course, selecting a colocation data centre requires factoring several aspects if you must conclude superbly.

Sincerely, selecting a suitable data centre is not easy; you must compare the services thoroughly to determine what is either available or lacking. Nonetheless, you can eliminate the stress of comparison by contracting one of the best colocation data centres in the UK.

Following the growing demand for colocation data centres, more providers are flocking into the industry. Moreover, the data centre providers operate differently, which means selecting a suitable colocation data centre becomes even more challenging. How do you tell an appropriate data centre for your business? Below are the tips to think about when selecting a colocation data centre:

Level of Security

A data centre houses all the applications and your enterprise data; a data breach would affect the business and is expensive to fix.

Robust security systems are vital to data centres, and it is advisable to consider the security equipment of a data centre. Data centres can provide 24/7 SIA qualified security, automatic fire suppression systems, private VLANs for network traffic, and physical and biometric security.

Before you select your data centre, find out whether the provider uses technology and software to protect your assets. Make sure that your centre provides proper surveillance, locks, and security personnel if necessary. Moreover, the security features of your colocation data centre must not limit your service scalability.

Capacity Adjustment

Data centres limit the capacity a company selects, except you upgrade infrastructure. Meanwhile, you can determine the robustness of the network by factoring in variables such as speed and network reliability. Of course, what plays a huge role here is the choice of your data processing technique, and you should carefully choose between ETL vs ELT because it can be a game-changer when it comes to your data processing efficiency.

Before you select a colocation data centre, check whether you can upgrade it to accommodate your business requirements in the future. For instance, if you are choosing a data centre that supports fibre optic cabling, make sure it features the power and space for future requirements. Figure out how much energy and space you might need for your business in the future.

Moreover, you can invest in server colocation to have more control over the total capacity, which requires using a local shared facility. While you rent the space, the data centre operator manages the cooling, power, and security systems.

Connectivity

Before you choose your data centre, think about the level of connectivity. If your business, for instance, is focused on content delivery, you need a colocation data centre with a Tier-1 provider.

Also, it is advisable to connect to at least two carriers, and it can be more if you expect bursts like what you experience during DDoS attacks.

You should also consider the public peering options provided in the facility. Typically, a decent peering would improve performance and mitigate transit cost, while wrong peering does the opposite.

Location

Location is a critical factor to consider when choosing your colocation data centre. Again, if your organisation is concerned about content delivery, you need a data centre with optimal deployment geolocation for speed.

Assuming you have multiple options across several continents, make sure to observe the traffic patterns for regions with high demands. Your choice of data centre colocation should offer enough coverage for the location.

To observe your traffic, you may use a home-brewed solution tool. It sends DNS requests to DNS servers accessible to the public, and each returns a response to the closest Incapsula PoP. The PoP helps to optimise coverage in the high-demand region while offloading the data centre facility.

Support

Customer support is important to fix emergency issues, and your choice of the data centre should guarantee 24/7 support. When a problem arises, your tech team may be unable to fix it, which requires your provider’s support. If the problem persists without a solution, it affects the business and competitors gain from it.

Before you contract the data centre provider, research the response time too. If a provider responds days after you complain, such services are not suitable for your business. Another aspect is the support team’s professionalism; an unknowledgeable support team either delays or fails to solve a problem.

Moreover, customer support should follow trends; there must be options for live chat, email messaging, SMS, and phone. Lastly, find out whether the colocation data centre services provide simplified resources for self-service.

Final Thoughts

While selecting a data centre, keep in mind that your business deserves excellent services because the data centre value increases yearly. A report from Research and Markets, for instance, valued data centre colocation at $31.39 (£23.14) billion in 2019 and expects it to reach $58.28 (£42.98) billion by 2025.

Although you may not find a perfect data centre, the tips in this article would help to select the best suitable colocation data centre. Be concerned about your data centre because an unsuitable data centre results in limited scaling, security breaches, poor internet service, and drop-off in competition.

Rylie Holt