data center | FIBERTOWN BLOG

Is Your Generator Reliable? Do You Have Backup Power?

On Sunday night, November 27th, Houston residents received a boil water notice. A water purification plant in the city had experienced a brief power disruption, causing water pressure to drop below the minimum requirement of 20 PSI. This drop in pressure is what caused officials to give the boil water notice as a precaution for residents.

State and local entities worked with guidance from the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality to lift the boil water notice about 40 hours later. And for that we’re grateful.

A Cautionary Tale…

This article is not intended to put down an organization. (In fact, we commend the quick, safe approach by the Houston authorities and greatly appreciate their efforts.) Instead, this article is a cautionary tale about backup power for all businesses.

We ask these serious questions.

Are the generators at your on-premise data center and/or office building reliable?
Do you have redundant power?
Are there plans in place if you lose power?
What service outages would your customers experience if you lost power completely for 2 minutes? 15 minutes? For an hour?
How much revenue would you lose? Are lives at stake if you lose power?
What damages would your hardware experience with a power loss?

You Don’t Have to Have All of the Answers

Truthfully, just typing the questions above makes our hearts beat rapidly. The ramifications of an outage for a company without backup power are expensive, time-consuming, and can cost human lives.

Power redundancy (i.e., having multiple sources of power) is a serious consideration for companies. Redundancy means reliability and peace of mind. And it’s for these reasons that clients choose a data center like FIBERTOWN.

It’s our job to have and maintain utility and generator power for your hardware. (We go into more detail about the traits of a top-rated data center in this article).

FIBERTOWN Can Keep You Up and Running

We have two data centers – one in Houston and one in Bryan-College Station. These data centers are fitted with redundant power and cooling systems. Backup generators are on site, and they are manned by IT professionals 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

We’ll keep your company’s hardware up and running, even if the world outside is without power.

Ask us how we do this! We’d love to tell you more.

Complete the contact form to begin a conversation.

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Top 9 Considerations for Selecting Your Data Center

At FIBERTOWN, we believe extraordinary service should be ordinary. You should seek this same level of client commitment when you select your next data center.

Below we’ve highlighted the most important considerations. To see the full-length document about choosing a data center, use this link.

The Most Common Considerations

Location. Your data center should be away from coastlines to avoid major hurricane damage, out of flood plains, and outside of known tornado alleys. It should also have multiple routes to it and be located within driving distance for many employees.

Connectivity. The access you get to multiple telecommunications carriers is a major advantage of contracting with a data center. Therefore, ask critical questions. Is the facility carrier-neutral with diverse points of entry? If you need a high availability (HA) protocol, ask if that is an option. Is a service like Megaport, a platform that allows for a direct connection to cloud providers, available?

Reliability. Learning about reliability, or uptime, is a must. For a data center to ensure uptime, infrastructure for backup power and cooling should be in place. Inquire what a data center’s uptime is and how they accomplish this. (Hint – It should be at least five 9s or 99.999%. We at FIBERTOWN go a step further to provide 100% uptime.)

Service Level Agreement. Well-written SLAs include an assurance about response time, security protocols, bandwidth availability, and more. The SLA should also include what steps the data center will take if it fails to meet the contractual uptime.

The Most Overlooked Considerations

The remaining five considerations are more nuanced. Technology professionals in your company (or you) will guide your search for a location, connectivity, reliability, and a strong SLA. But, the other five components of a great data center relate to the humans who run it.

We can write article after article about redundant systems, circuits, cloud providers, etc., but it’s humans who are at the heart of a data center.

We discuss in more detail these human factors – reputation, on-site staffing, timeliness, workspace accommodations, and the ease of doing business – in more detail here. We’ve included questions to ask and how to gain insight into a data center’s customer relations.

Have Questions? FIBERTOWN Has Answers.

FIBERTOWN is a data center with two locations (Houston and Bryan-College Station, Texas), and we’re proud of the services we provide. The Top 9 Considerations document is a guide for choosing the best data center for your company.

If you have questions about the guide or about FIBERTOWN, we welcome them.

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6 Redundancy Measures to Consider When Searching for a Data Center

The reason companies consider a data center is for a feeling of security – for an assurance that their hardware will be kept at optimal running conditions, no matter the circumstances. Because if this happens, then business continues as usual.

Yet, not all data centers are created equally, and if you contract with a subpar data center, your hardware and business continuity can’t be guaranteed. Below are six standards to consider when searching for a well-prepared, well-equipped data center, one you can count on during weather events, power outages, and more.

For a detailed look at these six standards, click here.

1. Accessibility via Automobile

Considering the roadways to and from your data center is critical. Determining if there are alternative routes is just as important since roadways may be blocked with debris during inclement weather.

Look for a data center with diverse roadways – major highways, plus smaller roads – leading to it. Employees can access hardware and continue working during catastrophic weather events.

2. Diverse Connectivity

Contracting with a data center that utilizes a variety of internet providers gives you “layers” of internet. If one provider isn’t available (bad weather, equipment issues, etc.), you still have internet access. Seek a data center with multiple, unique carriers and network providers with diverse paths of entry into the facility.

3. Redundant Power

Redundant power, or a power source in case the first source fails, is critical. Without it, equipment troubles, a backhoe digging in the wrong area, or severe weather shuts down power, possibly damaging your hardware and causing downtime. And downtime is expensive. Hardware is too.

Search for a data center with the infrastructure for redundant power. And ask, is the redundant power fully operational, partial, or distributed.

4. Redundant Cooling

Much like connectivity and power, a data center must have multiple ways to ensure cooling. Since the environment inside can never change, a data center’s infrastructure must be designed so a malfunction does not cause fluctuation in humidity or temperature.

Ask about the specifications for the data center’s HVAC system and what processes (for people and equipment) are in place to ensure a steady environment.

5. On-Site Staff Availability

This standard is often overlooked, but it shouldn’t be. With technology taking center stage in a data center, the human beings who staff it are the real superstars. Look for a data center that guarantees a trained on-site staff, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

6. Service Level Agreement (SLA)

Yes, the infrastructure for redundant power, cooling, and connectivity is vital. But, it’s the 100% uptime SLA that makes these measures the expectation…the norm…the standard for a data center.

Read carefully SLAs. Some data centers rely on insurance policies to provide 100% compensation if downtime occurs. Seek a data center with 100% uptime, even in the fine print.

About FIBERTOWN

We examine each of these six measures in more detail in this PDF. Download it and consider them as you search for a data center.

But know…at FIBERTOWN, we confidently meet – and exceed – these measures at both of our locations (Bryan-College Station and Houston).

We’d love to serve you and your company too.

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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!

Tag: data center