FEATURE
storage systems availability through the provision of secure and resilient critical
DON ’ T OVERLOOK
PROOF OF UPTIME SERVICE RECORD , PROVEN
CERTIFIABLE SECURITY AND OPERATIONAL CREDENTIALS AS WELL THE DR AND BUSINESS
CONTINUITY CONTINGENCIES . infrastructure , bringing into focus power availability , cooling and security .
Don ’ t overlook proof of uptime service record , proven certifiable security and operational credentials as well the DR and Business Continuity contingencies . Ask about forwards power availability , the types of cooling systems used and overall facilities energy efficiency ( PUE ) – use of 100 % renewably sourced power .
The level of on-site engineering competence available is also important , especially for configuring and interconnecting complex Edge cloud environments . These may involve public , private , hybrid and perhaps on-premises legacy applications . With this , the flexibility to carry out pre-production testing in the data centre will be a bonus to ensure everything works prior to launching .
The agility to respond extremely quickly to new opportunities or challenges is clearly a further important factor . Moving servers into a new strategic Edge data centre location will need to be done quickly and may require specialist support . To save time , an operator providing door-to-door migration services could be a major timesaving .
Consider too the management overhead of dealing with a number of smaller data centres owned by different suppliers with different SLAs and terms and conditions . There are also the tactical ways of doing business such as access to site , security levels and health and safety considerations , all of which are hidden costs – straightforward SLAs and single contracts covering all Edge colocation sites in an operator ’ s portfolio might well be beneficial in the interests of saving time . �
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