Data Centre Assessments - The Why and the How

More and more our clients come to Vivacity Technologies with the following questions:

• How do we right-size our data centre facility?

• We’re migrating on-premise equipment to the cloud, so we need a capacity management plan. Where do we start?

• We’d like to relocate our infrastructure within an existing facility, so how do we go about this while managing downtime?

• What are our biggest data centre risks to potential downtime and how can we mitigate against these?

The Vivacity Technologies team are highly experienced operators of data centre infrastructure and have decades of knowledge in the IT space. That’s why we’ve been supporting an ever increasing number of clients with data centre assessment services. This once fundamental of an IT infrastructure build, is now on uncertain ground, with workloads being migrated to the cloud and servers becoming ever more powerful.

Vivacity Technologies is based in Kamloops, British Columbia, and we’ve been sharing our expertise on data centre infrastructure throughout Canada for many years. Data centre risk assessments are vital to ensure potential hazards or flaws within a data centre/server room are identified and dealt with. Readying your business for future growth, including identifying necessary upgrades and areas of potential concern will ensure your data centre is right-sized and able to scale according to IT infrastructure needs.

While many data centre operators undertake their own assessments, in doing so they frequently overlook risks and flaws more readily apparent from outside the walls of the data centre. This is why hiring an independent consultant has value. During a data centre assessment, our team reviews many aspects of the building and its infrastructure, including:

5 things we typically look at within a data centre

1. Security – This includes both physical and virtual security. Identifying vulnerable areas of risk allows data centre operators to be proactive in making plans to eliminate these security concerns. When planning a future data centre, considering things such as location, geographic threats, and site-specific security hazards is important. Once a data centre is established, any existing threats must be dealt with and managed. Having an assessment will ensure hazards are identified, so you can have an emergency preparedness plan in place and be ready to test and roll it out when required.

2. Environment – Monitoring, alarms, and the building HVAC system are all included in our assessment of your data centre’s physical environment. A reliable cooling system is vital to a data centre’s successful operation. We assess the system in place, its capacity and areas of concern.

3. Connectivity – the risk assessment of your connectivity includes your core network, carriers and transit routes, as well as your cable management. We help clients take inventory of your assets, ensuring you have adequate capacity for the present and any future changes.

4. Power – we investigate the building’s power distribution, including its utility feed, power generators, UPS and batteries. Identifying single points of failure, as well as operational constraints due to power limitations, will ensure your data centre is able to effectively operate within the given constraints. Additionally, what happens if you need to rapidly expand, or move to greener and more sustainable energy sources? Looking at available options to scale in this instance can be critical.

5. Operations – here we look at the human element of your data centre, including the maintenance program in place, staffing protocols, training programs, and capacity management. While human error is often blamed in data centre security breaches, proper security awareness training goes a long way to mitigating these risks. Additionally, capacity management is a fundamental trend with data centre’s today. How do businesses accurately scale their data centre facility, as the IT infrastructure game is changing so rapidly. Thanks Moore’s Law!

By identifying and putting a plan in place for risks, operators can lower operational costs, optimize data security and reduce downtime. That’s why Vivacity Technology provides clear documentation of the risks as well as the required mitigation strategies that will ensure you are able to achieve any short and long term goals. Sign up today to have your independent data centre risk assessment completed. We will provide unbiased advice and actionable improvements for the benefit of your current IT infrastructure.