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Consider the Critical Importance of Data Storage for Your Social Networking Community
Posted by:
Walter Roark on
September 8, 2009 at
4:13AM AFT
In performing your due diligence regarding a white label community
deployment, keep in mind that your online community’s functionality is
only as good as its hosting performance. Have you compared the costs
and reliability quotient of in-house hosting versus affordable shared
hosting? Which data center Tier rating do you think offers the best
value in security and dependability?
Overview of Data Center Ratings
 To
succinctly summarize the difference, Tier I represents the most basic
type of hosting with a greater risk of downtime for your community.
Tier I rated data centers represent the prototype first developed in
the 1960s. Tier II complexes offer minor improvements, including
servers that are positioned higher off the center’s floor than Tier I,
but Tier IIs have also been around since 1970.
Moving from Tier I to Tier IV, one of the biggest differences is
built-in redundancy or delivery paths. When Tier I and Tier II centers
go down, they’re down. Tier III hosting offers one passive backup
delivery path to your active data stream. Tier IV centers provide two
full-time, active delivery paths.
For example, ThePort Network’s state-of-the-art Tier IV data center
delivers hosting with double-redundancy backup that even includes
diesel generators in case of a total power outage.
Quick Comparison of Data Center Tiers
Tier I - Delivery Paths: 1. Raised Floor Ratio to Overall Space: 20%.
Raised Floor Height: 12”. Year First Deployed: 1965. Average Annual
Downtime: 28.8 hrs. Site  Availability: 99.671%.
Tier II - Delivery Paths: 1. Raised Floor Ratio to Overall Space: 30%.
Raised Floor Height: 18”. Year First Deployed: 1970. Average Annual
Downtime: 22 hrs. Site Availability: 99.749%.
Tier III - Delivery Paths: 1 active, 1 passive. Raised Floor Ratio to
Overall Space: 80%-90%. Raised Floor Height: 30”-36”. Year First
Deployed: 1985. Average Annual Downtime: 1.6 hrs. Site Availability:
99.982%.
Tier IV - Delivery Paths: 2 active, Raised Floor Ratio to Overall
Space: 100%. Raised Floor Height: 30”-36”. Year First Deployed: 1995.
Average Annual Downtime: .4 hrs. Site Availability: 99.995%.
A Brief Story about a Company Which Decided Not to Go with a Tier IV Data Center
For an example of the real dangers and aftermath of not selecting a Tier IV data  center to host your servers, read this story
about Rackspace. Rackspace is a global web host which experienced a
critical interruption in its sole power display for a number of hours,
causing websites for thousands of customers to go down when their
servers lost power.
Smart, Secure, Affordable Shared Hosting
ThePort
Network keeps costs reasonable for its clients by offering shared
website hosting in a state-of-the-art, super-redundant Tier IV data
center. Together, ThePort and its dozens of clients share the cost of
data center operation and vital server maintenance. Everything is
included in the cost of the subscription agreement—no additional fees
for reliable, high-performance hosting for the life of the contract.
In addition, ThePort’s world-class Tier IV data center features the
latest in security, such as bio-key and physical key, along with
sophisticated firewalls and vulnerability scanning to protect against
viruses, malware, spyware and malicious hacking.
Administration of the servers and center is implemented and maintained
by ThePort as part of your contract. Over time, the savings of shared
hosting versus internal or dedicated hosting add up.
Questions for Your Software Vendor or SaaS Provider
In your research about data centers and community hosting, try to include a few of these logical questions:
* What is the uptime record over the past 90 days?
* How many backup generators do they have to keep the power running in the event of a power loss?
* Do they provide you with an uninterruptible power supply (UPS)?
* Does the data center have a powerful cooling system that keeps
temperatures down to at least 60 or 70 degrees Fahrenheit so that
servers and computers are kept cool?
* How sophisticated is the fire prevention system?
* Are system administrators on staff 24x7?
* Will they give you a list of customers you can contact as references?
If you would like to learn more about ThePort’s Tier IV data center and the benefits of secure, shared hosting, click here.
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