What Is Data Center Management?
Data Center Management is the practice of planning, monitoring, and controlling data center resources and operations to ensure efficient, secure, and reliable operation. It encompasses server provisioning, hardware maintenance, cooling, power management, security, and disaster recovery planning. There are three ways to manage data centers: fully self-managed, colocation, and fully managed.
Why Is Data Center Management Needed?
Organizations need effective data center management to ensure the efficient and secure operation of their IT infrastructure. Potential consequences of poor management include downtime (disrupted business operations), inefficient performance, security risks that open up the organization to data breaches and cyberattacks, inadequate disaster recovery, compliance issues when data is mishandled, scalability challenges, lack of ecosystem visibility, and increased operational costs resulting from inefficient resource usage.
Benefits of a Fully Managed Data Center
In today's digital age, businesses rely heavily on their IT infrastructure to gain a competitive edge, and how well it's managed can affect the company's ability to innovate, adapt, and thrive. Putting data center management in the hands of experts delivers the following key advantages.
Lower Operational Costs
Eliminate the need to spend money on infrastructure, database and system administrators, and any other on-site managed servers.
24/7/365 Backup, Recovery, and Support
Gain full-time professional technical support and trust your data is safe, secure, and stored correctly.
IT and Security Expertise Included
Work with dedicated industry professionals to set up, configure, monitor, secure, update, and troubleshoot the entire data center.
Why Would an Organization Choose a Fully Managed Data Center?
An organization may need to:
- Streamline and offload IT operations to focus on core activities
- Enhance scalability to adjust to changing data needs
- Minimize the risks of infrastructure failures and security breaches
- Leverage expertise and specialized skills
How to Choose a Fully Managed Data Center?
- Service level agreements (SLAs): What level of uptime and availability can we expect? What is the response time for support and issue resolution?
- Security: How is physical security ensured at the data center facility? What cybersecurity measures are implemented to protect our data?
- Scalability and flexibility: Can the data center accommodate our future growth and changing needs? How easy is it to scale resources up or down?
- Disaster recovery and backup: What is the disaster recovery plan, and how often is it tested? How are data backups managed, and how quickly can data be restored?
- Compliance and certifications: Does the data center meet industry-specific compliance requirements (e.g., HIPAA, GDPR)? Are there any relevant certifications, such as SSAE 18 or ISO 27001?
- Technical support: What level of technical support and expertise is provided?
- Pricing: What are the pricing models, and are there any hidden costs? How does the data center provider handle billing and cost transparency?
- Network connectivity: What is the network infrastructure like, and does it support our connectivity requirements? Is there redundancy to ensure network reliability?
- Location: Where is the data center located, and does it meet our geographical redundancy requirements?
- Service offerings: Does the data center offer additional services like managed security, cloud services, or hybrid solutions?
Self-Managed Data Centers Versus Total Managed Services
Fully self-managed data centers offer the space for day-to-day, on-site management, internal compliance control, and customization. On-site IT teams understand their organization's needs and requirements and have increased visibility into the infrastructure, aiding cloud migration decisions. However, self-management may include high costs from the facility infrastructure, hardware and software maintenance, and ongoing cybersecurity and compliance upgrades and expertise.
With colocation, a type of shared data center, or "colo," each customer rents space in cabinets or cages. The management can be a shared endeavor in which the colocation provider supplies power and connectivity to the customer space and is responsible for securing building access and keeping the facility cool so equipment doesn't overheat. The customer generally supplies hardware (servers), although the provider may assist with installation and maintenance. A colocation provider may also provide fully managed services from the same facility.
In a fully managed data center model, service providers are generally responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of the facility, hardware and networking equipment, services installation, upgrade and patching of operating systems and other system-level software, data center storage and backup maintenance, and infrastructure redundancy in case of disaster or other disrupting events.
Why Outsource Server Management to Evocative?
Evocative's fully managed data centers, in tandem with its managed network services, ensure customers that data centers are:
- Configured according to industry standards and best practices
- Up to date on the latest stable firmware
- Protected against network incidents or outages
- Monitored for vulnerabilities or other issues
- Operating at peak performance
