To choose a data center for your project, you need to know what parameters to consider when searching for it. First of all, you should understand what tasks you want to use the equipment for, how much data you need to process, and only after a complete analysis of this information, you can make the right decision.
Let's review the main criteria that influence the choice of a data center.
Data center Tier standard
One of the main criteria when choosing a data center is its reliability. The main certification of this parameter (or uptime) is the Uptime Institute methodology, according to which all data centers are classified into four so-called Tier ranks. Irrespective of whether you choose a data center for yourself or a client, the equipment must have such a certificate. All Uptime Institute certified data centers are located in the European part of the Russian Federation. In total, there are 26 of them. The only big Russian data center that is certified the maximum TIER IV standard is located in Saransk.
Classification of data centers:
- Tier 1. The system without backup. Annual downtime is 28.8 hours.
- Tier 2. The engineering infrastructure that has no full backup, but it’s equipped with auxiliary elements of power supply and cooling. Annual downtime is 22.0 hours.
- Tier 3. The data center that has several channels of power and cooling distribution. Annual downtime is 1.6 hours.
- Tier 4. The data center with a double backup system. Annual downtime is less than 24 minutes.
The data center parameters of electrical supply and cooling system
If the configuration of servers for storing information is non-standard, this item is especially important. The majority of data centers in the world are not compatible with GPU servers, so if your configuration includes such servers, take it seriously.
Location of the data center
As banal as it sounds, you should choose a location according to the location of the center's users. The main thing is where the majority of the service's users is located, and not the location of your office.
Management contacts and technical support efficiency
To save your time and money in the future, it’s better to test technical support in advance and make sure that the data center management is adequate. You can test employees by asking them to solve a typical problem and see how they react. In the case, if it takes them a lot of time to answer or they try to turn this around on each other, you should think about how quickly some serious problem will be solved in the future without your physical presence. As for the management contacts, you should understand that without the DM contacts, the approval of any issue may be deferred for the uncertain term.
European data centers
If you want to cooperate with European data centers, you will have to be patient, because their design of the workflow is very different from our one. As a rule, the technical support specialists of European centers are less efficient because they have the division of employees by the level of tasks.
The best data centers are a combination of all the above-mentioned parameters. There's no guarantee that the center with expensive equipment that has problems with communication or location will be the most right choice.
