COLOCATION
Data centres and the managed services provider Modern MSP By John Soanes, Head of Architecture, Adapt
The data centre should be a place where massive low latency connectivity collides with value added services that span the full range of infrastructure and business processes. If this sounds like an unfamiliar story, then now is the time to kick off discussions with a Managed Services Provider (MSP) that provides more than just power and internet bandwidth. Managed Services Providers can
The modern Managed Services Provider
transforms the data centre from narrow containment aisles of heat and cold to vast avenues of
connectivity, opportunity and services. John Soanes explores the kinds of
services that an MSP can offer.
offer access to a whole spectrum of data centre space ranging from economical Tier 2 options right up to the highest possible commercial resilience at Tier 4. In addition, some providers can offer locations with higher security certifications such as List X. Data centre locations are available across the whole of the UK as well as the most prestigious locations in the London Docklands. MSPs are often able to buy in bulk and then re-sell the space in much smaller quantities. Often it would be impossible to get access to those kinds of data centres if an organisation wished to buy a smaller number of cabinets. By taking a managed services contract it is possible to house infrastructure in some of the best data centres in the UK, sitting alongside household names, large banks and leaders of the digital economy. MSPs are now able to offer a
vast range of infrastructure options. Resilient internet connectivity utilising multiple carriers is being blended with firewall and security services. The services include managed firewall, load balancing, intrusion detection
services and distributed denial of service protection. Often these services are provided entirely on an OPEX basis with little or no upfront costs, available as multi-tenant solutions or even entirely dedicated for organisations with higher load or security considerations. As customer expectations increase, a range of services providing even greater resilience is emerging and multiple site options are becoming available. The best options will include the use of very low latency dark fibre in order to deliver services such as synchronous storage replication and BGP based internet provision where public IP addresses can migrate between data centres. Organisations that require
production environments with superior performance and very high resilience are often attracted to this new breed of MSP. Rather than having to invest in large amounts of infrastructure and expensive in-house expertise, they can use the skilled staff and expertise of the service provider to deliver against contracted service levels. With appropriate governance models in place to measure service delivery, this model works well and is almost always cheaper. The shift to a new model of working
comes with a complete overhaul of the commercial models offered by MSPs. The rigid days of five year contracts with fixed commitment are coming to an end and newer ‘pay as you grow’ models are now becoming more common. It should be possible to purchase data centre space on a variety of terms, perhaps even as low as 12
months. Realistically any less would be unlikely for a production service due to the potential service impact a data centre move can have – this does not preclude longer contracts for organisations that prefer this level of commitment and certainty, but it gives all companies access to better commercial options. The other metrics increasingly on offer are the quantity of rack space required or the quantity of power to be consumed by the infrastructure. The power metric is increasingly becoming the norm and in some data centres the power capacity has been exhausted long before the physical estate is full.
Pay As You Go The PAYG model allows organisations to provision additional physical space or power from the service provider as capacity requirements change. This is a very attractive model because it prevents companies from having to make power or space commitments up to five years in advance. In today’s economic climate of rapid change, mergers, acquisitions and realignment, it is almost impossible to predict where an organisation will be that far ahead. Having an expensive, large fixed cost of data centre space is rarely in an organisations interest; most prefer to provision capacity as needed, simply paying for what is consumed. It is probably worth striking a
note of caution though; physical data centre space, power output and cooling capability are finite resources and in older premises that problem is being acutely felt. It is important to understand how close your Service Provider is to their maximum available allocation and whether they will be able to offer organisations any additional space they may require. The increased density of the virtual data centre revolution certainly mitigates this shortfall.
Where low latency collides with value added services. 42 NETCOMMS europe Volume II Issue 3 2012
Virtual Insanity The virtual data centre – the birthplace of on-demand, XaaS, the Cloud. Call it what you will, it is a dramatic transformation of the premises that colocates organisation’s infrastructure. What the virtual data centre has given us is a potential twenty fold increase in the capacity of every physical data
www.netcommseurope.com
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