Bryan-College Station | FIBERTOWN BLOG

Your New Year’s Resolution – To Choose the Right Data Center

Each January, many of us set goals or choose a word or phrase as a focus for the new year. It’s our attempt to leave behind bad habits or anything that didn’t work and to look ahead to the possibilities. Businesses do this as well. January is a month for wiping the slate clean and getting a fresh start.

If your company knows it needs better protection for its hardware or is outgrowing its on-premise data center, then set a goal this year to choose the right data center.

We’ve taken the guesswork out of this process by creating a checklist to guide your data center search.

How This Checklist Helps Determine the Best Data Center for Your Company

Selecting a new data center or making the decision for colocation services is not an easy choice. Your budget, personnel, quality of your hardware, and business needs all play into the decision. Plus, fancy marketing language from facilities vying for your business and the “this is how we’ve always done it” mindset from your company leaders may affect the decision too.

Therefore, we created this checklist to help potential clients focus on the aspects of the data center itself. It removes all the distractions so you’re considering only the quality of the data center. Because that’s the first step in choosing an ideal one for your organization.

What Constitutes a Quality Data Center

When you resolve to select a data center, you’ll start by considering the most talked about, most popular features – connectivity, security, and power. Our checklist takes these critical features and breaks them down into the specific elements that constitute them.

For example, when a facility claims to have backup power, what does that mean? Are there generators onsite? Are there single points of failure?

When describing connectivity, is the data center located along major fiber routes and connectivity corridors? Does the facility offer enterprise-grade blended connectivity with 100% SLA? Does the data center have dual-entry connectivity to lessen the impact of unexpected interruptions?

When you use this checklist, you’ll know the questions, plus many more, to ask and the details to seek. No guesswork on your part.

Don’t Forget to Consider These Factors for a Data Center

We’ve found in over 25 years of business that people truly matter. It may sound strange for a data center, a business deeply entrenched in technology and the latest innovations, to write about the need for humans. Yet, when we poll our clients, we get consistent, positive feedback about our personnel who monitor the hardware in our two data centers in Houston and Bryan, Texas. We have real people working inside our data centers 24/7/365 so clients have eyes and hands in place to help if needed.

In your search for a data center, we encourage you to consider more than technology. Ask questions to learn about the onsite staff. Are they knowledgeable and well-trained? Does the data center provide visual inspections to assist with remote troubleshooting? Do you get a human response to a request within 15 minutes? (If your equipment goes down, time to repair is the most important factor.)

In our checklist, we’ve included these considerations and many others. They help you determine if you’re partnering with the most reliable and the most well-monitored data center available to you.

FIBERTOWN’s Data Centers in Houston and Bryan, TX Make the Grade

This checklist is thorough and a great resource in your search for a quality facility. It assesses features from a data center’s financial health to its reinforced roof structure for chillers and pumps to its multiple utility feeds for customer equipment. And these features just scratch the surface of what you’ll find on the checklist.

Get it here. And we wish you well in your New Year’s resolution to find the perfect data center.

(Pardon us for bragging, but we score very high on this checklist.)

Time and Power Availability – 2 Reasons Why Co-Locating in Bryan-College Station Makes Sense

FIBERTOWN’s Bryan-College Station data center is within driving distance of Texas’s four largest cities. The location of our data center is already an advantage for several reasons. Yet, if you’re considering building an on-premise data center in the Austin area, our Bryan-College Station site may be a better alternative than construction.

Building is Time Consuming AND Expensive

Convenience is one the strongest arguments in a sales pitch for any product, and the same is true when the product is colocation services. Our Bryan-College Station data center has been in operation for 25 years. It’s already built. It’s ready. It’s convenient.

The site is constructed with redundant power and connectivity, and both are concurrently maintainable. In fact, our data center has N+1 redundancy or greater. We’ll always have power due to this infrastructure.

We have generators on site, and they are tested on a schedule to ensure reliability. As for networking, our data center is located on a major fiber interexchange and is carrier neutral.

On-Premise Data Centers…

On-premise data centers need the same infrastructure as in our Bryan-College Station center, otherwise, you’re susceptible to downtimes and system failures. Finding an experienced architect or engineer to draw plans for your structure may take months, plus the time to construct the building. (Our latest research suggests a year or longer to build a data center.)

Furthermore, you must staff your on-premise center. You need knowledgeable people to maintain the day-to-day operations, plus clean and store fuel, perform preventative maintenance on generators and chillers, and provide security to the building 24x7x365.

While time to build and hire is an issue, money is a factor too. You have salaries, retirement packages, and taxes to consider for data center personnel. And currently, it’s about $1,000 more a square foot to build a data center compared to a typical office building. If you factor in the supply chain troubles of late, we’re back to where we started; it’s very time-consuming to build a data center.

Power Grid Limitations in Austin, Texas

With a population influx in Texas over the last two years, power grids have been strained. There’s a continual threat of rolling blackouts in the metropolitan areas. In fact, Austin city officials are not allowing any more data centers to be built on the Austin Energy Grid. This is forcing companies to look for sites outside of Austin, usually east of city.

With Bryan-College Station just 90 miles east of Austin, we’re situated perfectly to be your colocation site. We have power readily available. We have priority fuel too. (Do you? We’re guessing not.) There’s no wait time, and no building permits needed!

(You can get started with our services with a phone call. It’s that easy.)

Bryan-College Station Data Center is Ready for You

The bottom line – FIBERTOWN’s data center in Bryan-College Station is a state-of-the-art colocation site ready to serve you. There’s no wait time to get started with us, unlike the lengthy process of building your own data center and then finding and hiring qualified personnel to maintain it.

Also, building a data center without considering the maintenance is like purchasing an apartment building without considering the upkeep. Colocation services like ours save companies money and stress over the long haul. Every FIBERTOWN customer shares the expenses of maintenance, security, and personnel with the other companies using our data center. You don’t have to go it alone.

And remember, because we’re an established site, we’re not facing the permit issues for power that others are facing in the Austin area. We already have power and multiple sources in fact!

We’d love a chance to tell you more about FIBERTOWN’s colocation services. Start the conversation here.

Data Center Latest 0

Location, Location, Location – Why Bryan-College Station, Texas is Ideal for Colocation Services

The real estate adage “location, location, location” describes why FIBERTOWN’s Bryan-College Station data center is an ideal site for colocation services. Below, we outline four reasons why your company should consider our data center perfectly situated in the heart of eastern Texas.

Reason 1: Bryan-College Station is Located between Major Cities

FIBERTOWN’s Bryan-College Station data center is located within driving distance of the four biggest cities in Texas. It is about 90 minutes from Houston, two hours from Austin, and three hours from San Antonio and Dallas.

Because we’re near major cities, we’re also located close to major carrier hubs and Internet Carrier Exchanges. For our colocation clients, this proximity means lower latency (i.e., less lag time) and a constant Internet connection. There’s no need to be physically in one of the major cities if you can be there virtually.

Reason 2: Bryan-College Station Provides Safety and Accessibility During Weather Events

Our data center is located outside of the hurricane danger zone, as well as outside of tornado alley. As for accessibility, there are multiple routes from every major city to Bryan-College Station. Take interstates, state roads or, heck, even country roads.

Our proximity to multiple roadways eliminates the “one road in, one road out” scenario. With some prior planning, road construction, ice, downed trees and power lines, and heavy evacuation traffic won’t keep you from getting to our colocation site at Bryan-College Station.

Reason 3: Bryan-College Station is Home to Universities and Diverse Industries (and Less Slowdowns!)

As the home of Texas A&M, Bryan-College Station is rich with research and technology innovations. In fact, Amazon, in conjunction with Texas A&M, will be testing its drone delivery system here.

We’re also home to large healthcare groups and robust manufacturing industries, plus one campus of Blinn College.

Bryan-College Station has become a hub for diverse internet carriers wanting to meet the technology needs of these various entities. For FIBERTOWN customers, this means less slowdowns.

Reason 4: Bryan-College Station Offers a Small-Town Feel with Big-Town Services

At FIBERTOWN, we want to offer a small-town, personable feel while providing world-class service. A staff member at our Network Operations Center (NOC) is only a phone call away – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

For example, if you need help connecting your office in one of the big cities to our data center in Bryan-College Station, call us. A member of our NOC staff will answer the phone or respond to your email. And within a short time, usually 15 minutes or less, you’ll have an answer or help with your issue.

You are not another number to us. We pride ourselves on customer service by real people, staffed in our centers.

With this small-town feel, we provide big-city services, though. We offer anything from our blended bandwidth product to a diverse transport option from our provider partnerships. And if your office is in Houston, you can ride our Point to Point between our two sites and co-locate in each of our data centers! (We have a data center in Houston too.)

FIBERTOWN Invites You to Visit Bryan-College Station.

We’d love to give you a tour of our data center at Bryan-College Station. With its proximity to major and minor highways, it’s accessible. It’s built to withstand high winds, yet located outside of tornado alley and away from the coast to avoid hurricanes. The area is rich in technology and research so it attracts quality internet and power providers. That’s a win-win for our customers.

And on a personal note, come see what life is like without concrete and pavement everywhere! We boast a lower cost of living and are an easy day trip to any major city to relive your big-city life.

Use the contact form here to start a conversation about our Bryan-College Station data center. We’d like to hear from you.

Data Center Disaster Recovery Latest 0

3 Reasons Why Colocation Services are a Better Choice than On-Premise Data Centers

Perhaps this is a strange start to a data center article. But consider these questions – If you had an aching foot, would you rather see a podiatrist or a general practitioner?

If your vintage car no longer ran, would you rather a mechanic well versed in 30-year-old engines or a general mechanic?

If you were running a marathon, would you rather shoes designed for distance running or just any pair in your closet?

Most of us would choose the first option in each one. We would want the specialist.

And the “specialist” mentality is how we approach this next question – Should a business invest in colocation services OR build and maintain its own on-premise data center?

At FIBERTOWN, we’re experts at colocation. It’s our business. It’s our focus. We do it every day. All day.

And because of this laser focus, we’re effective. Unlike a company that’s pulled in lots of directions while building, staffing, and maintaining its own data center.

Below are 3 reasons why you should choose FIBERTOWN’s colocation services.

Reason 1 – Infrastructure is Ready to Go

Ease is the first reason you should invest in colocation services. On average, it takes 6 months to build an on-premise, or “on-prem,” data center. To build requires a specialized architect or engineer because of the redundancy needed for power, cooling, and connectivity. Any single point of failure can cause all of the other redundancies to be ineffective.

And of course, the cost of building, in general, has increased. But for materials and systems specific to a data center, these costs have been rising for the last 3-5 years. It is now 10 times the cost per square foot to build a data center compared to a standard office building. So, a low estimate comes to about $1,000 per square foot to build a data center.

We share these numbers to demonstrate the ease – the lack of hassle – you get when choosing colocation services over building an on-premise data center for your company. Even if time (or money) wasn’t an issue, what about the building know-how.

For example, redundant power (or multiple sources of power) requires different substations, plus generators, switchgear, and battery backup. These must be considered in the planning phase as they are very difficult to correct retroactively.

Redundant cooling doesn’t just happen either. Not only do you need enough chillers to cool your gear, but what if one breaks down and needs repair? Will you have an extra one ready to keep your gear cool while the other is being fixed? It gets VERY hot, VERY fast if the cooling fails.

And like power and cooling, redundant connectivity requires specialized engineering from the onset. A few questions to consider: Do you have more than one Internet Service Provider (ISP) coming into your building? Are those ISPs entering your building at different areas? Do they travel diverse paths directly outside of your building?

All of the specifics about power, cooling, and connectivity are already done at FIBERTOWN’s two data centers. The infrastructure is ready to go, and that makes it easy for you.

Reason 2 – Cost Efficiency

Utilizing the ready-to-go, state-of-the-art infrastructures at our colocation centers in Houston, Texas and Bryan, Texas is cost-effective for your company. (With the numbers we shared above – average time to build, cost per square foot, etc. – we’ve already hinted at this second reason.)

Contrary to an on-premise data center, a colocation center houses the servers and computer hardware of multiple businesses. This shared location also leads to shared expenses. Or, as we like to point out, cost efficiency for your company.

Multiple businesses share the cost to maintain redundancies within the facility (i.e., generators, cooling systems, and connectivity providers). THIS SHARING is what makes co-location work. Because without it, your company builds the center and then hires the people needed to maintain it.

For example, you need a team to run the generators every week, plus conduct load tests monthly. Parts will need to be fixed. Someone will need to plan for replacing equipment, as every piece has a shelf life. Within 5-10 years, most equipment will need to be repaired or replaced. The people and the parts cost money.

Oh, we also should mention insurance on the building, fire systems, utilities cost, and much more.

The good news, though – colocation services already factor in all of these costs and provide the needed services. The even better news – the costs are shared across all of the companies housed at a colocation center. And the best news, yet – a team of experts work at each FIBERTOWN facility. So, you’re not hiring your own data center team and determining health benefits, salaries, and vacation plans (so that someone is always working, which is imperative for a data center).

Simply put, building, maintaining, and staffing a data center is costly. Sharing a facility already equipped with experts and equipment is a cost-effective option for your company.

Reason 3 – Disaster WILL Strike, Not If

Disaster recovery is an important reason for investing in colocation services. At FIBERTOWN’s facilities in Houston and Bryan, Texas, we have backup generators onsite, plus an uninterrupted power supply (UPS). We have N+1 or greater cooling redundancy and house servers in a hot-cold aisle layout. And that’s just for starters!

Our facilities are strategically located away from tornado alley and the Gulf Coast to prevent as much storm damage as possible. BUT, we’re near major highways for easy access and located outside of the flood plain.

Our two buildings were constructed to withstand strong winds, and our equipment is tied to the roof to keep it from lifting off the building in 100+ MPH winds. If antennas, cables, rods, and lights fly off, they can easily penetrate other equipment, leaving a large path of damage.

There’s also temperatures to consider.

We know it’s hot right now (over 100 degrees in Texas in July!). And our chillers are keeping things cool. But, will your on-premise data center run without fail during the cold, like in Winter Storm Uri? Will your generator be ready when the utility power shuts off for extended periods of time? Will your generator fuel line freeze up because you weren’t prepared for temperatures that cold for so long? Will you run out of fuel because you don’t have priority or because roads are iced over? How large is your fuel tank? Will it hold the load for 24 hours or longer?

All of these questions must be considered.

But also note, people often use “major disasters” as a reason for using data centers. BUT, what if a hard drive fails in the middle of the night? That’s a simple fix. Without a designated night team, though, no one notices for some time. That’s where our 24x7x365 on-site staff comes in for the win.

Will you have someone available 24x7x365? Rather than hiring someone to be there when this occurs, use FIBERTOWN’s on-site staff. (And simple hard drive swaps are completely free. Even at 3AM.)

It’s not a question of if a disaster will strike; it’s when. So, be prepared. Our colocation centers are ready for you.

At FIBERTOWN, We Specialize in Data Centers

Data centers are what we do. We don’t buy and sell stocks or fix broken bones. We make sure your computer hardware stays up…so your business continues to run. We’ve been doing this for 25 years, and we’ll keep doing it for another 25 (and hopefully more!).

At FIBERTOWN, we’re staffed with experts. Our two facilities are fitted with the latest equipment and security to keep your servers and hardware safe and running. This is our specialty.

Reach out if you want to talk with us about colocation services. We’d love to speak with you. Use this form to start the conversation.