“Big Data” housed in a Chicago data center refers to extremely large and complex collections of data sets.  Processing Big Data is difficult with traditional database and data processing tools.  It requires a sophisticated IT infrastructure.

According to a recent industry survey, most companies consider their Big Data processing as mission-critical.  Therefore, data centers handling Big Data must have real-time, advanced capabilities to handle the high volume and high velocity.

Another finding involves cloud computing solutions.  A majority of surveyed companies are either currently using cloud solutions or are considering them.  A mere 20% of IT professionals surveyed said they had no plans for a Big Data cloud migration.  Big Data in the cloud adds another layer of complexity to processing.

The survey findings indicate the need for data centers to be able to handle Big Data in real-time and in the cloud.  Data centers must be equipped with platforms architected for processing speed, reliability, consistency and scalability.  It’s important for customers to tour prospective data center facilities and carefully analyze capabilities.

CoreLink is a national, leading provider of data center hosting, colocation and managed services solutions with locations in Phoenix, Seattle and Chicago.  The Chicago Data Center is an 81,600 square foot stand-alone building. CoreLink has modified the existing infrastructure to meet an exacting 2N configuration, with over 200 watts per square foot of usable UPS power and secured over 16MW of utility power.

Continue to read the CoreLink Data Centers’ Blog for information about our Chicago Data Center.

The selection process for colocation services in a Chicago data center involves many variables.  The goal is to find the right match based on specific business requirements.

To help facilitate decision-making, companies can outline the necessary qualifications.  In other words, they can create a “check list” of important provider criteria to be followed throughout the selection process.

Making the right decision from the start will save businesses time, money and energy.  Once a data center provider is selected, a contract is signed for a period of time that could extend for months or years.  When the equipment is moved on-site, relocating to another location would be problematic in many ways.

To help companies make better data center colocation decisions, a check list should include the following metrics:

• Redundant Power
• Power Density
• Efficient Cooling
• Green Technology
• Access
• Loading Docks
• Office Space
• Engineering Experience/Expertise
• Customer Satisfaction Ratings
• DCIM
• SLAs
• Bandwidth
• Disaster Recovery
• Physical Security
• Expansion Capabilities
• Others…

The check list categories and ratings can be configured to evaluate each data center candidate based on what’s most important to the company.

To ensure the best fit, customers will want to tailor their data center solutions to their specific business requirements.  In addition, they should enlist data center providers that have proven experience serving similar customers.   Finally, the goal is a productive partnership.  The data center provider needs to function as an extension of the customer’s IT team.

CoreLink is a national, leading provider of data center hosting, colocation and managed services solutions with locations in Phoenix, Seattle and Chicago.  The Chicago Data Center is an 81,600 square foot stand-alone building. CoreLink has modified the existing infrastructure to meet an exacting 2N configuration, with over 200 watts per square foot of usable UPS power and secured over 16MW of utility power.

Continue to read the CoreLink Data Centers’ Blog for information about our Chicago Data Center.

As industry news and analyst reports confirm, companies expect to use cloud services in Chicago data centers.  But the reasons for moving to a cloud solution can vary greatly among companies.

One perspective not often highlighted is the agility benefit for large companies.  Often, cloud services are touted as a way to level the playing field for smaller companies competing with larger ones.  But, unlike many larger firms, smaller companies can be nimble and move quickly to accomplish strategic goals.  A cloud environment can help large companies move as fast as their smaller competitors.

Competition and time to market can be a major motivator for a cloud migration.  Product managers can innovate quicker and customers can receive new products sooner.

Disaster recovery is another reason companies move to the cloud.  Building a disaster recovery infrastructure is costly and time-intensive.  The cloud is a perfect solution that eliminates these huge investments.  Outages caused by disaster, natural or man-made, can be a major catalyst for a cloud strategy.

Cloud migrations require automated processes.  Any manual IT processes need to be transformed to an automated platform.  As a result, companies gain efficiencies through this automation.

Cloud projects can also uncover opportunities for new services.  Many companies organize cloud committees to secure necessary executive buy-in, evaluate all options and manage cloud migrations.

CoreLink is a national, leading provider of data center hosting, colocation and managed services solutions with locations in Phoenix, Seattle and Chicago.  The Chicago Data Center is an 81,600 square foot stand-alone building. CoreLink has modified the existing infrastructure to meet an exacting 2N configuration, with over 200 watts per square foot of usable UPS power and secured over 16MW of utility power.

Continue to read the CoreLink Data Centers’ Blog for information about our Chicago Data Center.

Outages at a Chicago data center can be caused by a number of things:  natural disasters, human error, equipment failures and more.  Any downtime can be catastrophic for businesses that depend on systems availability.  Although companies and their customers are negatively impacted, businesses have an opportunity to learn how to make their data centers increasingly reliable in the future.

During this past year, data center outages grabbed headlines across the country.  One of the top outages on everyone’s list is SuperStorm Sandy.  This past October 29, 2012, data centers in New York and New Jersey were put to the test.  Flooding affected many facilities.  Data centers throughout the region relied on generators for days on end.

Although generators depended on diesel fuel to provide backup power, flooding shut down many diesel fuel pumps.  So, engineers had to come up with creative ways to keep the generators fueled.  The post-mortem analysis of Sandy will continue well into 2013.

Another storm this year affecting data centers took place on June 29, 2012.  Strong thunderstorms, called derechos, hit northern Virginia.  These powerful storms affected an Amazon data center housing cloud computing services for popular sites like Netflix, Heroku, Pinterest, Quora, Hootsuite and Instagram.

When utility power went out, the facility’s generators didn’t operate properly.  The data center had to rely solely on emergency UPS systems until they depleted.  After the storm, the facility was re-engineered to better spread workloads across multiple data centers.  The backup systems were re-designed and tested regularly to ensure proper functioning.

Managing unexpected outages will be an ongoing project for data center managers.  But with lessons learned from previous disasters, the job will hopefully become easier.

CoreLink is a national, leading provider of data center hosting, colocation and managed services solutions with locations in Phoenix, Seattle and Chicago.  The Chicago Data Center is an 81,600 square foot stand-alone building. CoreLink has modified the existing infrastructure to meet an exacting 2N configuration, with over 200 watts per square foot of usable UPS power and secured over 16MW of utility power.

Continue to read the CoreLink Data Centers’ Blog for information about our Chicago Data Center.

Demand for colocation and commercial multi-tenant data center space in Chicago data centers is expected to grow in 2013, according to market research firm the 451 Group.  A big reason for this growth is the number of decisions that were deferred in 2012.

The U.S. presidential election, the “fiscal cliff” situation and the possibility of another economic slowdown have caused companies to take a “wait and see” approach.  Once companies get a sense of where things are headed in 2013, decisions related to data centers will likely be implemented.

The analysts in the report expect financial services and healthcare verticals to make up a significant portion of this demand.  New regulations will drive the need for more data and space shortages will drive servers off-site to colocation facilities.

The report also draws an important conclusion:  the risk of oversupply in the data center market is unlikely.  In addition to colocation, companies are increasingly investigating new technologies for outsourcing, including cloud services.

In fact, analysts point out many new data centers coming on line are 50% pre-leased before they’re completed.  Demand is projected to outpace supply throughout 2013 and for several years beyond.

CoreLink is a national, leading provider of data center hosting, colocation and managed services solutions with locations in Phoenix, Seattle and Chicago.  The Chicago Data Center is an 81,600 square foot stand-alone building. CoreLink has modified the existing infrastructure to meet an exacting 2N configuration, with over 200 watts per square foot of usable UPS power and secured over 16MW of utility power.

Continue to read the CoreLink Data Centers’ Blog for information about our Chicago Data Center.

Companies looking to upgrade IT operations often consider converging operations in a Chicago data center.  But, consolidation mistakes can be costly.  One way to control expenses is to start first with a complete infrastructure assessment.  The following steps will help keep the project on track:

• Organizations need to work with all stakeholders involved in the project to define the high level goals and identify the expected results.  Challenges can be addressed and solutions brainstormed.

• All the equipment, knowledge and skills should be identified and inventoried.  Details include roles and services for servers, as well as quantities of storage, network and security assets.  A company needs to measure equipment floor space, number of racks, support gear, amount of power required, and amount of cooling needed.

• Organizations must compare goals against current IT and data center assets.  This analysis involves identifying which data center operations can be consolidated. This step also includes identifying how services and applications will be delivered from the data center to the end user.  Solution options are considered such as outsourcing, cloud migrations, virtualized platforms and desktops, and more.

• Companies need to estimate the cost of implementing every solution identified as a possibility to develop a preliminary budget.  In addition to the hard costs of time and materials, companies need to also consider how end users will be impacted by things such as downtime, skill levels and contingency plans.

• After analyzing all the options, organizations need to select the solutions that best meet their goals and budget.  Although every stakeholder will have different priorities, everyone will need to come to agreement on the final course of action.

• At this stage, the project scope must be fully documented and presented in the form of a proposal to C-level executives.  The proposal needs to make a good case for why the data center investment makes sense.  For example, how much will the consolidation project cost versus how much it will save over time?  How will service be improved?  How will goals be accomplished?

• After executive approval, a project manager should be assigned and the project begun.  Success depends on solid leadership and experience of the project manager.

• When the project is completed, performance levels should be tested and compared against metrics established during the planning phases.

When properly managed, upgrading and/or consolidating a data center can help companies save money, improve operations and increase efficiencies.

CoreLink is a national, leading provider of data center hosting, colocation and managed services solutions with locations in Phoenix, Seattle and Chicago.  The Chicago Data Center is an 81,600 square foot stand-alone building. CoreLink has modified the existing infrastructure to meet an exacting 2N configuration, with over 200 watts per square foot of usable UPS power and secured over 16MW of utility power.

Continue to read the CoreLink Data Centers’ Blog for information about our Chicago Data Center.

Measuring efficiencies in Chicago data centers is an ongoing project.  The environmental impact of data centers has brought an increased awareness to improve these efficiencies.

Current measurement tools include Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and Data Center Infrastructure Efficiency (DCiE).  Both these metrics measure the relationship between total facility power delivered and IT equipment power available.  The results are high-level benchmarks for comparing data centers.

But these measurements fall short in a major way.  First, they don’t show incremental improvements in efficiency over time.  And, they don’t monitor the effective us of power supplied.  They only measure the difference between power supplied and power consumed.

Here’s an example:

• A Chicago Data Center with an initial PUE of 2.0
• Virtualization is used to increase server utilization from 10 percent to 60 percent
• The data center would use existing resources more efficiently, but the PUE would not change

A better way to measure is:

• Analyze the effective use of power by existing equipment relative to equipment performance

For example, a typical x86 server consumes between 60 and 70 percent of its power at low utilization levels.  Raising utilization levels minimally impacts power consumed.  However, the effective performance per kilowatt has been significantly affected.

Data center managers must focus on higher effective performance per kilowatt.  This action will improve energy consumption and extend the life of existing IT assets.

CoreLink is a national, leading provider of data center hosting and managed services solutions with locations in Phoenix, Seattle and Chicago.  The Chicago Data Center is an 81,600 square foot stand-alone building. CoreLink has modified the existing infrastructure to meet an exacting 2N configuration, with over 200 watts per square foot of usable UPS power and secured over 16MW of utility power.

Continue to read the CoreLink Data Centers’ Blog for information about our Chicago Data Center.

Providing a stable IT environment is a given for CIOs and Chicago Data Centers.  But, in today’s world, CIOs must take risk management beyond security breaches.  The broader picture involves the entire organization and how technology can protect or expose assets.  For example, how can technology help protect intellectual property?

Risk management must also go beyond regulatory compliance.  Just like keeping IT operations available and warding off security breaches at the perimeter, complying with Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA and other regulations is a basic requirement in risk management.

CIOs must provide the core IT infrastructure to support business operations.  They also must understand everything that puts the company at risk. CIOs should ask themselves how they can use people and technology for competitive advantage.

And the CIO is in a perfect position to establish an enterprise-wide risk management program.  To do this requires an intimate knowledge of the business processes and how those processes depend on IT.  This is critical because the bad guys, both inside and outside of the organization, are looking for vulnerabilities in those processes.

CoreLink is a national, leading provider of data center hosting and managed services solutions with locations in Phoenix, Seattle and Chicago.  The Chicago Data Center is an 81,600 square foot stand-alone building. CoreLink has modified the existing infrastructure to meet an exacting 2N configuration, with over 200 watts per square foot of usable UPS power and secured over 16MW of utility power.

Continue to read the CoreLink Data Centers’ Blog for information about our Chicago Data Center.

Today’s data-on-demand infrastructure places a premium on data distribution and availability in Chicago Data Centers.  And, it’s clear as companies grow, their data center needs will change.  As data centers evolve, companies most likely will have to relocate IT infrastructures to more accommodating environments that will be able to easily keep pace with growth.

The first step during this evolution is to prepare the data center facility.  For a successful migration, companies must have the right infrastructure in place.  IT managers must consider many factors, including continuous business operation, power requirements, redundancy needs, capacity management and more.

Dependence on data and IT operations will only get more pronounced in the future.  As companies use more bandwidth, hardware and data center space, they’ll consider colocation migration projects as viable strategies to consolidate IT infrastructure.

Colocation facilities offer meaningful solutions for companies requiring enhanced facilities for their IT infrastructures.  Working together with their data center provider, IT managers can migrate operations seamlessly, if the proper planning takes place first.

CoreLink is a national, leading provider of data center hosting and managed services solutions with locations in Phoenix, Seattle and Chicago.  The Chicago Data Center is an 81,600 square foot stand-alone building. CoreLink has modified the existing infrastructure to meet an exacting 2N configuration, with over 200 watts per square foot of usable UPS power and secured over 16MW of utility power.

Continue to read the CoreLink Data Centers’ Blog for information about our Chicago Data Center.