Archive of posts from 2014

Data Center Outages, Vol. 3: Human Error

Data Center Outages, Vol. 3: Human Error

Ken Hill
Read Time 2 min Read

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...

Hybrid Cloud: The Strategy of Choice

Hybrid Cloud: The Strategy of Choice

Brent Meadows
Read Time 2 min Read

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...

Data Center Outages, Vol. 2: Connectivity

Data Center Outages, Vol. 2: Connectivity

Ken Hill
Read Time 2 min Read

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: Exiting the Data Center Business

White Paper: Exiting the Data Center Business

Devon Cole
Read Time 2 min Read

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...

Outages, Vol. I: Power

Outages, Vol. I: Power

Bryan Smith
Read Time 3 min Read

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...

Disaster Recovery Planning: Geographic Diversity

Disaster Recovery Planning: Geographic Diversity

AJ Kuftic
Read Time 2 min Read

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...

Why Expert, On-site Staff Matters

Why Expert, On-site Staff Matters

Read Time 2 min Read

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...