Data Center Map is a nice Google mashup that maps colocation and hosting companies throughout the world. Enter a location, such as Chicago, and the site will hone in on all the facilities in that area. It’s pretty handy if you’re looking to outsource some or all of your data center infrastructure and would like to do it close to home.

The site is run by ActiveWebs, a Danish web hosting company, and looks to be funded mostly by Google ads. Most of the listings are in the U.S., and the one for Chicago includes 350 East Cermak, run by Digital Realty Trust, which we did a story on recently for its LEED certification.

This is also a good site for those managed hosting and colo companies out there. You can get your place listed for free here.

Data center operator Peak 10, Inc.announced the acquisition of a 33,000 square foot facility in the Atlanta, Georgia suburb of Norcross last week. 

It has acquired a 33,000-square-foot facility in Norcross, a suburb of Atlanta. A third of the property has already been outfitted for use as a data center and the company has room to grow inside the space, according to reports.

The company runs data centers in Florida, North Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee. In February, Peak 10 entered the Richmond, Va. marketplace with its acquisition of data center and managed hosting operator, bayMountain. 

The company operates eleven data center facilities with a customer portfolio that includes Global Knowledge, Pergo, Churchill Downs, LendingTree and the Jacksonville Jaguars. 

The new facility, which is being upgraded, will be fully operational in September 2007.

Are data centers worth the trouble?

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF — Tuesday, August 6 2007 at the Next Generation Data Center Conference, Amazon.com Chief Technology Officer, Werner Vogels lead off the event with a keynote outlining why he hates data centers.

According to Vogels, IT trade rags are telling you how cool and exciting data centers are, with examples of high profile companies investing vast amounts of time, money and intellectual effort into engineering them.

The elephant in the room, according to Vogels, is that building data centers requires technologists and engineering staff to spend 70% of their efforts on undifferentiated heavy lifting.

Vogels suggests companies use their staff for building things that can differentiate them from competitors, rather than banging their heads against the oftentimes frustrating, unprofitable business of data center infrastructure maintenance.

Vogels used the recent generator failure at hosting company 365 Main as an example, explaining that even the best data center infrastructure plans fall through. He noted the complexity of UPS systems, data center fire suppression and cooling — and asked the audience why a company would want to be responsible for maintaining such sophisticated equipment and systems that have nothing to do with distributing their products.

“And we haven’t even talked about bandwidth. Network is this dirty little secret,” Vogels said. “If you run big data centers, you worry — can I get enough bandwidth going out of our data centers? Data centers are not only limited by the number of servers you can get in them, but by the bandwidth you can get out.”

After your infrastructure is set up, what about the servers themselves? “You will lose 8-10% of your disks per year — given” Vogels said. “You won’t lose your data, but your performance goes down the drain. Every year, you will be replacing 4,000 disks. You never knew that when you decided to start running your company.”

Having to manage multiple data centers is a true pain, according to Vogels. And you can forget about trying to scale these things.

Vogels’ presentation devolved into a blatant pitch for Amazon’s new SaaS products. But he raised an interesting question — are data centers worth the trouble? Daniel Golding, an analyst at Tier 1 Research, recently said only 50 global businesses — mainly in financial and Internet services — would build their own data centers while everyone else will outsource the task in the future.

Let me know what you think in the comments section.

Equinix announced today that it will buy IXEurope Plc, a European data center colocation company, for almost a half-billion dollars.

According to the Equinix press release, IXEurope has 14 data centers that make up almost 400,000 square feet of data center space. The $482 million deal brings Equinix onto the European continent; the company is already spread out across the United States and eastern Asia.

The move expands Equinix’s total footprint to more than 3,000,000 square feet of data center space. Just this week I interviewed an executive about the unique Equinix colocation data centers.

Question from user:
We are a growing company and need a 3rd party to put together a long term data center strategy. Should a company our size build a tier 1,2,3,4 data center? What else should we be looking for?

Answer from Charles King:
Let’s take your second question first. What you should be looking for is a data center strategy/solution;
1) adequate enough to satisfy your current business needs and technical performance requirements, and
2) flexible and powerful enough to meet your projected future requirements.
Before proceeding, your business and IT organizations need to sit down in a quiet space and hash out their relative hopes, needs, and expectations. Take your time, don’t mince words, and make sure that everyone is engaged in the process. You’ll be living with the results for a long time to come.

After your internal processes conclude, bring in third party consultants/vendors including preferred vendors and companies with good reputations for data center design/implementation. Keep your eyes and minds open. Long term strategizing offers some great opportunities to consider and embrace ideas and solutions that you might never have thought of otherwise.

The differences between Tier 1-4 really come down to matters of availability, reliability, and cost. It isn’t possible to make blanket pronouncements without knowing more about your budget, business needs, and the platforms and applications you need to support. Good luck!

More from Charles King’s Ask the expert page.