How do you choose your data center?

[valuehostus]

How do you choose your data center? usually, what elements you will consider in?

 

[gfxguru]

Review, connectivity, ping test, test file speed test, price, and support

 

[HostLeet]

Some things to consider when looking at potential Data Centers to house your servers...

1. Facility Location

2. IT & Network Infrastructure

3. On-site Security & Surveillance

4. Power & Backup Generators

5. Uptime Record + Company Reputation

6. IT Staff & Personnel

7. Fire Suppression & Cooling

8. Contracts/SLA's/TOS's

There are many more things to consider but these will get you started.

 

[daddy_yankee]

Most important aspect in choosing a datacenter is it's location.

For example, if your customer base is mostly from North America, then you better choose the location as North America or at the most Europe, as it is central to Asia and Europe.

Another important aspect is FACILITY and their FACILITY MANAGEMENT.

Adding to it Service level agreements, support, contracts and as mentioned above by HostLeet, their Terms of Service should be reasonably in support of the customer.

 

[MilesGeek]

The above replies have covered the important points. Also, check if there is any provision in case of disaster.

 

[Jgwynne]

How do you choose your data center? usually, what elements you will consider in?

Eenie, meenie, minie, moe always works for me

 

[RandyTHQ]

>>>>support<<<<

 

[Igal Zeifman]

The three S's:

Support
Security
SLA

 

[valuehostus]

Thank you for your sharing. Very comprehensive. Does most data centers should provide SLA?

 

[SenseiSteve]

Some questions to ponder when selecting a data center:

• What types of security policies do they have in place?
• What is their power availability and history of outages?
• What cooling scheme do they employ?
• How do they monitor security and network health?
• What alerts do they have in place? (fire, smoke, moisture?)
• What are the prices of their services, including hands on?
• What is their SLA?
• Do they offer dedicated ports?
• Who are their upstream providers?
• Do they test their backup generators?
• Do they offer A/B power?
• Do they offer livechat support?
• Do they have 800 phone support?
• Do you feel comfortable communicating with their sales and support staff?
• Do they offer BGP?
• Is their center accessible?
• Are they growing?
• How quick do they respond to support tickets?
• How do they handle DDOS attacks?
• Do they post network status?
• What types of cabinets do they offer?
• Can you customize power to your requirements?
• What is their policy on additional IP's?
• Do they offer KVM services? Crash carts?
• Do they offer managed backups?
• Do they offer cross connects?

 

[Virtix]

Hello,

Uptime, Personal, Security, Cost

 

[Natcoweb.]

SLA and support are very important!

 

[Cloudc.me]

SLA, Support, Security and Price!

 

[Epidrive]

Pings,
Security,
Connections,
Facilities.

 

[micronetvps]

Try to chose one that reflects the same policies that we want. We try to pick ones that will allow the same things that we want to allow our customers to do like VPN and IRC.

 

[GelHost-Basil]

Some questions to ponder when selecting a data center:

• What types of security policies do they have in place?
• What is their power availability and history of outages?
• What cooling scheme do they employ?
• How do they monitor security and network health?
• What alerts do they have in place? (fire, smoke, moisture?)
• What are the prices of their services, including hands on?
• What is their SLA?
• Do they offer dedicated ports?
• Who are their upstream providers?
• Do they test their backup generators?
• Do they offer A/B power?
• Do they offer livechat support?
• Do they have 800 phone support?
• Do you feel comfortable communicating with their sales and support staff?
• Do they offer BGP?
• Is their center accessible?
• Are they growing?
• How quick do they respond to support tickets?
• How do they handle DDOS attacks?
• Do they post network status?
• What types of cabinets do they offer?
• Can you customize power to your requirements?
• What is their policy on additional IP's?
• Do they offer KVM services? Crash carts?
• Do they offer managed backups?
• Do they offer cross connects?

Spot on. Exactly what i be looking for. :devil:

 

[paradiseweb]

Did not realize SLA was so important. Are you talking about colocation here, I am not horribly familiar with it so any info would be appreciated.

 

[vostrocloud]

All the features above are important but the most important ones are Support quality and SLAs, as well as network stability.

 

[webling]

How do you choose your data center? usually, what elements you will consider in?

I chose the one I run out of based on the fact that they are a Top 5 Global Internet Service Provider Founded in 1999; publicly traded company (NASDAQ: CCOI). Serves over 160 major metro markets in North America and Europe. Provides Internet access, Ethernet transport and colocation services. Currently serves more than 25,000 NetCentric (bandwidth-intensive users) and Corporate customer connections worldwide.

I figured if they've come that far, everything is in place.

 

[BrandonM]

Many different factors have been discussed already, but you can't forget to factor in the ability to expand (Provided this is something you need). If you ended up with the last bit of space in a datacenter you are hoping to expand further in odds are you will be either A- Waiting from them to build out or B- Waiting for another client to move out.