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Data Center FAQ's

What is Breakered Amp Power?

Breakered Amp Power is a common term used in retail colocation leasing to describe the economic model by which a customer will be charged power fees. In a breakered amp colocation model, the customer receives a specific breaker size and voltage and pays the same pricing for the power distribution whether they use it or not ("use it or lose it"). Typically the provider has the ability to increase the unit pricing in the event that the underlying utility provider's unit pricing per kwh increases.

What Is Business Continuity and Resiliency (BCR) Planning?

Business continuity and resiliency planning is critical for the ongoing operation and success of an enterprise. Data centers and network architecture play a central role in preparing an enterprise for catastrophic geo-political events. How much would being down for 1 second, 1 hour, 1 day or even 1 week cost a company? Increasingly enterprises are reliant on IT systems to buy, sell and create products. Ensuring that your enterprise can withstand natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes may seem obvious, but are you prepared for prolonged utility outages or fiber cuts? A strong business continuity plan will prepare the enterprise for the plausible worst case scenarios.

What Are Five Things to Consider with BCR Planning?

1. What would happen if my data center is down for 10 minutes, 10 hours or 10 days? 2. What would happen if my headquarters was no longer accessible by employees? 3. What would happen if a fiber cut happened to one of my existing carriers? 4. What would happen if so and so in the IT department quit? 5. What would we do if business grew 50% in the next month?

What Are Data Center Cages and Cabinets?

Cages and cabinets delineate the type of space that a colocation provider will convey to a customer in a retail colocation model. Cages are moveable walls on top of raised flooring to separate one customer's space from that of another. Cabinets, on the other hand, are typically lockable individual racks to house server, storage or communications equipment. Cages are typically for larger retail colocation customers, while cabinets can come in 1/3, half or full sizes. Both are used in shared room environments (other customers).

What Is A Carrier-Neutral Data Center?

A data center is said to be carrier-neutral if a customer can order cross connections or communications services from any existing provider and the data center provider actively tries to court additional carriers into the facility.

What Is Colocation?

Colocation refers to the deployment of multiple users under the same mechanical and electrical systems. Commonly, these users will share the same four walls and air distribution system. Through colocation, a data center provider can offer significant economies of scale for users that aren't large enough to bring down the cost per critical KW that a scaled data center can provide. Usually, more redundancy and reliability can be achieved for the same unit of cost than what a stand-alone user could do on her own.

What Is Data Center Containment?

For years, IT managers have deployed their servers and IT equipment in hot and cold aisles. In such a scenario, the front side of two rows of equipment racks face each other and draw cool air into each rack's equipment intake. As such, the back side of two rows each expel hot air into the hot aisle. While this is an efficient concept, it may not go far enough for higher power loads. A solution to make the data center even more efficient is to deploy either hot or cold aisle containment. In cold aisle containment, the cold aisles are augmented to effectively "trap" cold air into the cold aisle. This allows the data center operator to increase air handling set points and more efficiently cool the intakes of the servers. On the other hand, hot aisle containment is a strategy to isolate the hot air exhaust found in the hot aisle. In both cases, the intent is to restrict mixing of significantly different air temperatures. Both solutions can be effective to lower PUE.

How Do You Convert Volts and Amps to Watts?

Understanding your total critical load is vital to sizing your data center correctly. To understand your total Wattage, multiply voltage by amps used (Volts X Amps = Watts). If have 3-phase power and the amps are the same on all phases, then multiply the resulting Wattage estimate by the square root of 3.

What Does Critical Power Mean?

"Critical" power or "IT load" often refers to the data center load that is consumed or is dedicated to IT equipment such as servers, storage equipment and communications switches and routers. Power for lighting or cooling the data center is excluded from "critical" power. It's important for an end user to understand their critical load as the data center - whether managed internally or outsourced - will be sized based on the current or expected amount of critical power.

What Is A Cross-Connection or Data Center Cross Connect?

A cross connection is most often a layer 1 or physical layer connection between two networks. Data center providers typically segment cross connections by type of cabling used to make the connection - copper, coaxial or fiber. Cross connections are usually completed by the data center provider for a non-recurring (NRC) and a monthly recurring (MRC) charge.

What are remote hands?

Remote hands are a series of on-site, physical IT management and maintenance services provided by data center and colocation providers for an additional fee. Learn more about Remote Hands.






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