Your Computer Network Solution
Floods Ahead: Moving IT to Higher Ground

With the recent announcement by the Army Core of Engineers anticipating a high probability of flooding this year as a result of the partial failure of the Howard Hanson flood control dam, we have received numerous inquiries from our clients in the Kent and Auburn Valleys regarding disaster recovery planning and provisioning of off-site operations.

Most of these clients have remote locations or offices that would be severely affected should access to critical IT services be interrupted. Having the ability to continue to function should the Kent or Auburn Valley flood is imperative.

This is where we come in... ICS Support has partnered with a data center provider to relocate core IT services to secure data centers in Redmond, Bellevue, Eastgate and Seattle. By placing critical infrastructure in these data centers, operations can continue regardless of what happens to your home site.

What Exactly is a Data Center?
A professional Data Center is a physical location, generally located in a non-flood-susceptible location, that provides several critical elements:

• Secure (card lock) access with cameras and security
• High-End regulated power with prolonged generator capacity
• Fire suppression
• High-End AC and environmental controls
• Very High-Speed Internet backbone access with redundancy
• Rack Mounted Enclosures

A typical data center can operate indefinitely even when all surrounding electrical service is interrupted. During our prolonged power outage here in Washington following the December 2006 windstorm, one of the centers we work with was able to continue uninterrupted operation for more than a week while local power was out.

Other Benefits
We recently relocated central IT operations for two of our clients to a data center here in Redmond. Their lease had expired on their corporate offices and there was some uncertainty as to where they wanted to relocate. By placing their servers and IT resources in a data center, they could provide uninterrupted IT services to all of their remote locations while having flexibility to locate corporate operations virtually anywhere.

One of the side benefits they didn’t realize initially was that since their servers were now on an Internet backbone, performance at remote locations improved significantly over what they had experienced when their servers were located in their offices with only a T1 connection.

Economics
Data center access is typically sold by rack or partial rack basis. Typical costs for a full rack are $600-$800 per month. Half or quarter rack allotments are also available at reduced costs. Internet access charges are included as part of the service (with some restrictions). The amazing part is that the bandwidth you get with the rack is far more than most business could afford by bringing in high-speed Internet directly. This makes the actual rack space almost free.

Another consideration is the rack space itself. A half rack is roughly half the cost (monthly) of a full rack, so utilizing high-density servers (i.e. 1 or 2U devices) is advantageous. In the case of one of our clients, we were able to provide them two new 1U servers allowing them to save $300 per month in rack charges. This meant that the ROI on the capital investment in equipment was less than one year! Not to mention that the new servers were significantly more powerful than the ones they were replacing. Not bad!

Business Continuity
By locating servers and IT resources to the data center, business can continue to operate almost regardless of what happens to your physical location. With the ability to telecommute, users can work from home, coffee shops or almost anywhere Internet access is available.

The other challenge with business continuity is telephone service (telecommunications). It’s great that you can access your e-mail and business applications during a disaster, but having access to the phone system is important as well. The data center can play a key part in that as well. Many telco providers have the ability to quickly re-route service in the event of an emergency. An IP-based (VOIP) phone switch located in the data center can accept calls and forward them automatically to either IP phones (soft phones) or even cellular devices. Within hours you can have your whole team working off-site or even at home.

Start Planning!
The time to start planning is now. The rains are coming! We have solutions available to us, but they do take time to implement and put in place. Call Chris Faist, Integrated Computer Systems Support, at 425-284-5410 and we can work together to ensure that your network infrastructure is safeguarded.