04-12-13 | Blog Post
Even if your business requires a disaster recovery site, you are not locked into building a brick-and-mortar data center of your own. There are several alternatives available that can help reduce costs but still maintain protection of a backup facility should disaster strike.
For many organizations, the best solution is to partner with a Michigan colocation provider. Colocation offers you a cost-effective solution while allowing control over your hardware, software and communication equipment.
Organizations can build and maintain their own disaster recovery site, however, this is not financially possible for everyone. Building your own disaster recovery site includes costs for real estate, construction and equipment. Even after building an off-site data center, there are still many costs that an organization must maintain, such as personnel, energy, taxes and building maintenance.
Colocation Checklist
There are many options to consider when deciding to keep your disaster recovery site in-house or use colocation. Here is a checklist of things to consider created by AFCOM, the leading association for data center and facilities managers.
RTO & RPO Specifications
Your colocation provider should match your recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO). It should provide basic site or facility recovery services to operate within your RTO and RPO.
For example, Online Tech’s disaster recovery cloud solution (DR Now!) has a warranted 4-hour recovery time objective, specifying the worst case availability in case of a disaster, and a warranted 24-hour recovery point objective, specifying the worst case amount of data that would be lost in the event of a disaster.
Recovery Site Ownership
In the case where data has to be transferred to the recovery site, it is important for you to know who is responsible and has ownership over the recovery site. If it is a third party, you may want to assess them as well.
Recovery Site Location
The colocation facility should be a safe distance from its primary site in case of a natural disaster or power outages. Online Tech is an ideal IT disaster recovery service provider with our Michigan data centers uniquely situated 53 miles apart, directly connected with Gigabit fiber, and located on two separate power grids.
Standardization
Your colocation provider should have a standardized recovery methodology and communicates their processes and procedures. You want to ensure there is a solid recovery strategy in place and it is tested regularly.
Recovery Terms & Procedures
You should be aware of the colocation provider’s recovery terms and procedures in case of an incident. These processes should be clearly defined and standardized.
Colocation Offers Reliability, Security & Compliance
By partnering with the right colocation provider, companies can have the additional benefit of ensuring reliability, security and compliance. For example, Online Tech’s high availability environment ensures client data and applications are secure and available 24X7.
Colocation hosting providers build their environment to meet national industry standards of PCI, HIPAA and SOX compliance. Online Tech’s data centers were found to be 100% compliant after completing a HIPAA audit against the latest OCR HIPAA Audit Protocol. This means that Online Tech can guarantee their facilities operate and implement HIPAA compliant controls and security measures.
Michigan Colocation
You should also consider where your disaster recovery site is geographically located. Michigan data centers are situated in an ideal area for year-round, safe and secure hosting. Michigan has an extremely low risk of all natural disasters including earthquakes, hurricanes, and tornadoes. This low probability offers you the added benefit of having your disaster recovery site in a safe, secure site.
Located within a naturally cool climate, Michigan data centers are also cost-effective and more energy efficient. Cool temperatures allows data centers to use less powered cooling which saves in energy costs and lowers power consumption.
