Member Article

Colocation, is your server happy?

We are sometimes guilty of overlooking the importance of our servers. Especially in smaller companies, they sit in the corner of a room or a cupboard and get little more attention than the occasional check from the IT manager or simply a visit to change a backup tape.

This is crazy really when you consider how much we demand of our servers. They often contain all of our financial data, customer quotations and emails and we often afford them very little respect

.If a server is located in an office environment, it can cause problems and lead to an unhappy server. Offices tend to be too hot most of the time for a server to operate correctly. Additional heat to a server can be very bad. Servers tend to produce more heat than a normal PC anyway. Add to this the ambient temperature being too high and it can cause the server to slow down and could result in the server components exceeding their normal operating temperature and failing.

I am sure our office is a good reflection of how much tea and coffee is drank in the typical UK office. If the server is located alongside people then this could have severe consequences. Imagine the damage a spilled cup of coffee could do to a server. Not only would your server be offline for a long period of time whilst replacement components were sourced, your server warranty wouldn’t cover this type of damage and it could cost a small fortune.

How about someone unplugging the server because they needed to charge their phone or plug in a hoover. You would be amazed at how many times this has happened when non IT savvy people have access to the server location. An unplanned power outage is usually pretty serious for a server and can easily lead to data being lost.

Then there is the risk you take of malicious damage or theft. Could a disgruntled employee damage your server? They may not have the admin password but if they have physical access to the server, they could do just as much damage.

Imagine our data centre as a 5 star hotel for your server. There is a full suite of security and safety precautions in place so it will always remain safe and protected. We take security at our data centre very seriously. It is hidden away in a very unusual place and has the latest CCTV, physical security and monitored alarms in place. We are fully protected from fire with our state of the art fire suppression systems which automatically react if smoke or fire is detected.

There is an array of other features such as industrial air conditioning systems, extensive battery backup devices and a large generator. This fully automatically power backup system is capable of detecting a power failure and starting the generator so that the equipment in the data centre is unaware of any problems. When the power is restored, the system switches back to mains power and shuts down the generator. This data centre has the capability to run off grid for a number of weeks with its backup fuel reserves.

Give your server a rest and collocate it to the cloud. It works hard 24 hours a day for you and it deserves to be in the best location possible.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by David Elvis .