How Do You Evaluate a Data Center? 211
mpapet writes to ask about the ins and outs of datacenter evaluation. Beyond the simpler questions of physical access control, connectivity, and power redundancy/capacity and SLA review, what other questions are important to ask when evaluating a data center? What data centers have people been happy with? What horror stories have people lived through with those that didn't make the cut?
Datacenter Archaeology (Score:2, Funny)
Pull floor tiles and compare the amount of obsolete technology-- Thicknet cables, VAX cluster interconnects, water chiller hookups, FDDI cables, etc. with the amount of space remaining.
Anything less than 4 inches of obsolete crud isn't worth excavating. Leave it a few more years.
--Joe
Security (Score:1, Funny)
I co-locate at a data center in Alberta. It is in the basement of a high-rise building. Because of this there is much traffice in/out of the building. The main doors within the building leading to the datacenter itself can be opened with a credit card, or even a set of keys (um, any key). This poses a security risk. Even though you'd need to know exactly where to go and when (so as to not bump into people working there), it is still possible to get what you're after realtively simple with no alarms. They do have cameras though, so wear a mask - and since this is Alberta, no one would question the mask.
I picked up one of my servers a couple days ago, and they didn't ask for ID either. I could have been ANYONE.
Personnel (Score:3, Funny)
More important than the technology is the policies and training of the personnel running the operation. It will fail, eventually: It always does, no matter how well its designed or what with promises of infinite uptime. So walk into the data center and count the number of people wearing hiking boots, divide by the number of racks, and there you go. The most grizzly looking guy wearing hiking boots usually knows everything. He also usually has a lighter and a screwdriver if you ask.
I don't know why this is...
Re:i ran a junky data center (Score:4, Funny)
A smattering of basic physics helps.
Long ago in a distribution centre a far far away - well, east SF bay, anyway - we had a custom mini doing a bit of work for a major retail store chain's logistics business. In the warehouse they built a little room for the mini upstairs, everything cheap but per spec, they insisted. They used one of their domestic air conditioners for the cooling, as it had the right thermal rating to match the heat dissipation we required for our gear. Cool, we said - no problem, cheap is ok as long as it's specced correctly.
It wasn't long before we had a service call for a hardware failure. Sent the engineer out, and it was about 110 in the computer room. They'd installed the air intake and air outflow of the air conditioner in the same tiny room.
Re:i ran a junky data center (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Just off the top of my head (Score:3, Funny)