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Data center ratings have become an increasingly popular marketing point for dedicated web and application hosting providers, but what do those ratings really mean, and how do they impact the success of your business? By understanding how data centers are evaluated and scored, you can make a more informed decision about your specific business needs and maximize the value of your IT costs.
Depending on your point of view, you may focus on certain data center features when reviewing managed hosting and colocation providers. Some businesses are concerned with connectivity, others with environmental features, or physical security, or routing protocols; it’s a long and diverse list. At the heart of every individual concern is an overriding one and it’s the same for every business- uptime. As anyone who has spent time reading and evaluating service level guarantees (SLAs) knows, there are a lot of ways uptime can be defined.
Data center ratings ideally provide a standardized, industry accepted means to fairly and objectively review data centers, so customers can cut through the marketing hype and truly understand the differences when making important business decisions. In practice however, this hasn’t fully been the case.
Here’s the first problem- there are two different “industry standard” ratings systems, and likely more to come. SAS 70 Type I and II certifications refer to the rules followed by the Auditing Standards Board of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). Originally used for auditing profit and loss statements for organizations and businesses, the IT dependencies of large financial institutions has led to SAS 70 audits being done on service providers as part of regulatory requirements. Successful completion of those audits was viewed as a market advantage, and today a relatively obscure finance term has become an advertising bullet point.
Parallel to this, a ratings system was developed by the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) and The Uptime Institute more specific to data center operations. They established a tier system that focuses largely on physical infrastructure, so for example a Tier 1 facility fulfills minimal operating data center infrastructure requirements, while a Tier 4 facility has fault tolerant redundancy. While there has been some debate on the methodology used, both the AICPA ratings system and the Uptime Institute’s Tier system provide solid yardsticks to measure the uptime and reliability of a data center. As Shakespeare put it, there’s the rub.
Data center uptime does not necessarily equal uptime for your Website or hosted applications. In real world business situations, your success isn’t dependent on having four identical routers on standby in the event of an equipment failure; it’s dependent on the live person who is on site ready to answer your call in the middle of the night. That’s the difference you get with NaviSite. We’ve covered the infrastructure bases, gotten the SAS 70 Type II certification, and built the N + 1 redundancy into our data centers. We consider that merely the groundwork. Just as a 5 star restaurant rating is no guarantee you’ll be satisfied with your meal, when you are evaluating potential managed hosting and colocation providers, data center ratings should just be one item on a long checklist. At NaviSite, our top rated data centers are just step one of our total commitment to your success.
Tags: data center uptime, Managed Dedicated Hosting, managed hosting, SLAs
