An additional common cause of outages is human error. A number of miscalculations at the hand of employees can lead to an outage, costing many companies far more than they can afford to pay or lose. What are the most common examples of human error? Incorrect configuration changes—networks, servers, SANs Incorrect backups Load balancing misconfiguration and errors Firewall misconfiguration...
According to the 2014 State of the Cloud Survey, the majority of enterprises currently employ a multi-cloud strategy, while 48% are in the planning process for hybrid cloud adoption1. While there are benefits to both public and private cloud configurations, creating a hybrid cloud strategy for your business can offer the best of both worlds. Not everything can be virtualized...
Another cause of service outages is network connectivity. A loss of connectivity resulting in downtime can lead to a number of negative business impacting events. What causes a loss of connectivity? Equipment failure Software crash Human error Denial of service (DoS) attacks Fiber cuts Companies that manage network connectivity in-house to support mission critical applications are more susceptible...
White Paper: Is It Time to Start Thinking About Exiting the Data Center Business? Companies make a choice to either redirect IT management functions to partners, or continue to maintain IT services internally, for a variety of reasons. From allowing staff to focus on what’s important to ensuring proper disaster recovery planning, turning to a third party provider typically...
In the world of data centers, there are three common causes of outages: power failure, loss of connectivity and human error. No matter the cause, it’s common knowledge that unplanned data center outages result in immense costs to unprepared businesses, including: Brand and reputation suffers Legal and regulatory ramifications Equipment damage Lost confidence among stakeholders Negative impact on productivity...
What Do You Have to Gain From Geographic Diversity? In the world of data centers, what is geographic diversity, and why is it significant? Geographic diversity is an important disaster recovery term—it describes adequate distance between primary and secondary (or backup) sites. Why is geographic diversity important? Geographic diversity is imperative when it comes to...
When utilizing the services of a hosting provider, you’re entrusting your critical systems to a third party. While working with a trustworthy hosting provider brings many benefits, it’s important that your partner can ensure your data will remain secure. Part of security means the ability to depend on expert staff who are on site, 24x7x365. Hosting providers that function as...
Leadership and/or Ownership Change Leadership changes often cause short-term uncertainty within a business. New leaders bring fresh ideas and expect fast results. It’s important for leaders and their teams to focus on core business objectives and avoid the distraction that sometimes go with maintaining a high capacity, highly available IT infrastructure. During a time of executive transition, it is...
Experiencing an IT Outage Experiencing a natural disaster or an unplanned outage is a valid reason to look at moving your IT environment to a professional data center provider. In doing so, you will benefit from multiple layers of built-in redundancy for power, cooling and network connections. The burden and stress of ensuring resiliency and uptime shifts from your...
Is your hardware reaching the end of its life cycle? A hardware refresh can be complex and cumbersome, and may require a significant capital expenditure. When purchasing hardware, you must forecast your needs well into the future. As a result, you are most likely paying for capacity that you do not need in the near-term, or risk performance issues as...
How would your business benefit from reducing the cost associated with your IT infrastructure? The cost of running an internal data center can greatly exceed the cost of utilizing a cloud services provider in many ways. One of the single greatest benefits of cloud technology is cost reduction not only from a capital basis, but also from an operating...
New Application Development Developing and managing a new application can be a complex undertaking. Doing so while managing and maintaining an internal data center can also tax an IT organization and may ultimately delay the successful completion of your project. So the question is, can you afford to manage the infrastructure components while giving equal attention to developing the...
Are you experiencing increased business growth? When the pace of business is on the rise, IT demands become greater and more complicated. At times, the demands of managing an internal data center in the midst of such growth can inhibit your IT team from focusing on new projects. It is key to maintain a comprehensive understanding of the expenses...
Do you have industry or government compliance requirements such as HIPAA, PCI DSS, GLB, SOX or others? Ensuring proper security measures and adhering to regulatory compliance requirements can be a difficult undertaking for a company running an internal data center. Understanding the challenges of security and compliance are paramount in following industry and government standards. Finding a qualified hosting...
What is the difference between a partner and a vendor, and how do you find the perfect fit in a prospective cloud provider? When it comes to cloud providers, there are two kinds of organizations: partners and vendors. A traditional cloud vendor cloud vendor typically sells resources in pre-determined packages. As a result, unless your resource demand happens to...
Through a recent research study, third-party consultant Cloud Spectator found that the way most organizations are evaluating cloud providers is flawed, potentially leading organizations to select the wrong vendor. While the use of the cloud addresses many challenges often faced by IT departments, there are two little known pitfalls that should be addressed: Perceived Performance Paradox: many cloud providers...
Expedient is excited to announce that the expansion of their Indianapolis data center, which kicked-off in early 2014, is near completion and will be finished this summer. The expansion includes over 6,000 square feet of new, production ready, raised floor computing space, immediately adjacent to the existing data center. Upon completion, the total raised floor footprint in Indianapolis will exceed...
Are you wondering how much storage and bandwidth you need for your disk-based backups? Log onto the Disk-based Backup Calculator to find out. The options in the calculator will determine your sizing requirements—you can even save your configuration and download it as a PDF. Intel and Expedient have partnered to create the Cloud Calculator, offering information on the...
Intel and Expedient have partnered to create the Cloud Calculator, offering information on the uses, research and tools of the cloud and related infrastructure components, as well as multiple technology calculators, including the Cloud Build Versus Buy Calculator. Try the Cloud Build Versus Buy Calculator to find out the total cost of ownership of building your own cloud solution,...
Are you wondering how much it will take to build your own data center, or are you unsure if you have everything accounted for in your construction budget? Use this calculator to see what it really takes to build out a data center. Intel and Expedient have partnered to create the Cloud Calculator, offering information on the uses, research and...
With the ever-changing enhancements taking place in today’s technological landscape, in-house data centers are continually met with the challenge of providing enough space, power and cooling. And when these data centers do finally reach their limits, the CIOs and IT managers are then faced with that all important decision: Does it make more sense to invest in an in-house data...
Exploring the Advantages of Colocation Solutions You may have heard that colocation solutions are an ideal way to accommodate your company’s ever-changing IT needs. You may also be skeptical, realizing that colocation is an investment, and uncertain as to whether the investment is worth the risk. Is colocation right for your business? To answer whether colocation...
If you’ve been researching cloud computing, you’re probably well aware of the private vs. public cloud debate. Before you decide which end of the debate you side with, it’s important to know the difference between the two. Private Cloud A private cloud hosting solution, also known as an internal or enterprise cloud, resides on company’s intranet or...
Which Cloud is Right for You? The concept behind cloud computing seems simple enough. In the most basic sense, computing workloads are moved off premise and then delivered as an “anytime, anywhere” service to be more cost effective and efficient than traditional IT. Things begin to get a little more complicated when Read Article
How Complicated Is Protecting Your System from Downtime and System Interruption? Avoid downtime with Expedient’s turnkey host to host virtual server replication solution Protecting you critical data and applications from system interruption doesn’t have to be complicated. Expedient’s host to host virtual replication solution is engineered to protect the integrity of your data and...
Is Cloud Computing Right for Your Company?: Take the Readiness Quiz Cloud computing solutions have recently received a big push from managed service providers and the internet has become crowded with articles, advertisements and blog posts all touting the benefits the cloud has to offer. Download Expedient’s Public Cloud vs. Private Cloud Whitepaper for expert analysis on the...
Exploring the Hybrid Side of Cloud Computing There is little arguing it: Cloud computing has forever changed the state of the IT landscape. However, what is important to note is the way this change is taking place. Instead of plunging headfirst into the cloud, many IT departments are taking a “one piece at a time” approach,...
The Importance of Defining Uptime Every industry has its own shorthand and IT is no different. When looking for web hosting and data center services, uptime is one of the terms thrown about. Uptime is, at its most basic, the amount of time that a server stays up and running. Uptime is usually measured as a...
Bullet Proofing Your Business with Disaster Recovery Don’t become another IT statistic Why is disaster recovery important? Consider this startling statistic: of companies that experience a computer outage lasting for more than 10 days, half of them will be out of business within five years. This statistic is even more alarming for businesses located within an area where...
Questions to Ask Potential Cloud Providers As your organization looks to a cloud solution provider for services, there are key areas that need to be reviewed. Use this checklist as a guide to help you evaluate any potential cloud solution providers. For additional insights, Read Expedient’s “Not all Clouds are Created Equal” whitepaper Evaluating...
Three Reasons Why Virtualization is for You At first glance, virtualization may sound like something straight out of a science-fiction movie, but it has become an integral part of a data center. The benefits of virtualization are many, but let’s look at the main three: Simplify IT Management Cost reduction Getting to the Cloud ...
The physical hardware that a cloud is built from has a direct effect on quality of service. With cloud platforms based on the Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 v2 product family, Expedient has created an agile, efficient and scalable foundation. Using Intel’s Cloud technology not only enables better performance, but also lowers resource costs for your business which allows you to...
Your Disaster Recovery Toolkit: Network Availability Basics Question: If a disaster were to affect your IT infrastructure, how long could your business survive? Answer: Unless you actively test your disaster recovery plan, chances are you will be out of business within one year. Take note: less than 50% of U.S. corporations actively...
So, you want to your increase virtual machine performance. There is a perception that if you add vCPUs, this will automatically do the job. In reality, doing so may actually have a negative performance on the virtual machine. Here are a few best practices to keep in mind when looking to increase virtual machine performance: If possible, start with...
When it comes to online retail, rapid spikes in traffic happen, sometimes resulting in degraded website performance. This was the problem Thirty-One Gifts was experiencing when they approached Expedient with the need to optimize their IT infrastructure. They needed to be able to support increasing levels of activity without impacting their website. Expedient partnered with Thirty-One...
Staying on top of new technology is key: Expedient uses Intel Cloud Technology to assure that you can run your workloads on infrastructure that delivers industry-leading performance and quality. Why is this important to you? Users get an agile, scalable, efficient infrastructure with better value for the bottom line, and getting better performance by using the latest technology just makes...
Data Center Build vs. Buy: What to Consider With the ever-changing enhancements taking place in today’s technological landscape, in-house data centers are continually met with the challenge of providing enough space, power and cooling. When data centers reach their limits, CIOs and IT managers are faced with that all-important decision: Does it make more sense to invest in an...
Tips from the Data Center: Ensuring the Availability of Your Data Here is an unfortunate bit of reality: Customer loyalty is fleeting—even the most trusted and valued customers will leave you if they suspect the IT infrastructure housing their private information and supporting your company is not secure. This is why any...
Choosing a Cloud Provider: the Importance of Compliance Transparency Looking beyond HIPAA, SOX or PCI-DSS compliance claims The alarming aspect of searching for a cloud hosting solution is that, despite claims to the contrary, your hosting provider may not actually be able to support your direct compliance needs. In truth, your provider is probably not trying to be...
In the world of Cloud Computing, customers are becoming more diligent in understanding vendor Service Level Agreements (SLAs), which are designed to protect the customer in the event of downtime. However, an SLA offers zero protection if the vendor declares bankruptcy. Collapses of cloud storage providers due to bankruptcy don’t happen very often—but they do happen. Looking forward, how can...
Business Continuity: Preparing for a Disaster, No Matter the Size Natural disasters are unpredictable. Whether it is a hurricane rocking the East Coast, a blizzard pounding the North, or a tornado causing havoc in the Midwest, these events give little, if any, advanced warning. While it may be easy to calculate the physical damage such an event causes, have...
Exploring the Advantages of Colocation Solutions You may have heard that colocation solutions are an ideal way to accommodate your company’s ever-changing IT needs. You may also be skeptical, realizing that colocation is an investment, and uncertain as to whether the investment is worth the risk. Is colocation right for your business? To answer whether...
