How to choose a data center for an IT project in Russia: uptime, money and overall adequacy

The team of the King Servers project faced the need to move its infrastructure from one Russian data center to another. In this material, we talk about the difficulties that we have encountered, and practically share tips on choosing a new site for equipment placement.

Prehistory

To think about transferring the infrastructure to a new data center made us think about life. At some point, the stability of his work has ceased to meet the needs of our business. If earlier we had enough reliability according to the TIER-2 standard, then with the development of the company and the growth of the number of customers, we needed the reliability of TIER-3, which our old platform could not provide.

It was possible to solve the problem only by moving. We decided to approach the process thoroughly and conducted a small study of the data center markets in Russia.
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Flour choice

We had four basic requirements for the future of the data center:

• TIER-3 Uptime Institute reliability certification;
• technical support that can assist with the installation of equipment in the rack;
• adequate cost of services;
• positive customer reviews.

These criteria met 6 data centers. We analyzed the proposals of all of them, paying particular attention to the Moscow sites.

The first surprises began already at the stage of agreeing on the cost of services - for example, we came across organizations that praised their data centers and talked about high reliability, but at the same time offered prices 2-2.5 times higher than the average for other sites.

In addition, some sites in the pursuit of a client were ready to embellish reality. For example, a couple of times during the negotiations, we were promised compensation in the amount of 100% of the monthly cost of services if idle for more than 5 minutes, but later in the contract sent, the compensation was 1% - that is, in fact, we were not guaranteed any reliability.

After a round of talks with the administration of all sites of interest, it was decided to move to DataPro's Moscow data center. The move was planned in several stages - later this decision was not very successful.

You can not just go and move

After agreeing on the details of cooperation with the manager assigned to us, we planned the move. On the appointed day, our adventures began.

From the very beginning, things did not go according to plan. First of all, the site engineers could not prepare the rack in advance, and collected it already on the day of the move - because of this, we lost time to check the network equipment.

At the same time, the data center employees wanted to wait for the arrival of all of our equipment and only then finally assemble and connect the rack. Using serious efforts, we managed to persuade our colleagues to assemble the rack before the servers were brought. At that time, the network equipment was already delivered to the data center — switches and the main router; the servers themselves were planned to be delivered at the second stage. When the rack with the network iron was nevertheless assembled, it turned out that one of the switches did not work — there were no problems with the move.

We were able to quickly find an outsourcing company that could bring us a switch on the day of the move - it was Saturday. However, DataPro was denied us the delivery of equipment - it was impossible to accept it without the approval of the data center security service, and its employees had weekends on weekends. Another thing is interesting here - initially the delivery of all our servers was planned for this day, and this did not cause any comments from our manager. In fact, it turned out that even if all our hardware had been brought, it would have been impossible to serve our customers until the site’s security staff came to work on Monday.

As a result, we decided to cancel the move to DataPro and stop cooperation with this site. However, the story did not end there, and we were faced with problems with the export of equipment already delivered there. It took us more than a month to evacuate the switches - managers responsible for working with us alternately went on vacation or went on business trips.

We also had to agree and sign a lot of papers - for example, we were required to sign commissioning certificates, which, under the terms of the contract, would oblige us to place the equipment in this data center for 12 months. We were not ready to sign it, and we were refused to give the equipment without a signature - the situation was resolved only after the call of the head of the company, the deputy director of DataPro. As a result of a difficult conversation, the situation was settled - we were not refunded for installing the rack, although we didn’t enter it, but we managed to pick up the equipment.

Attempt number two

Unsuccessful first experience could not stop our move, so we, with new forces, took up negotiations with various data centers. This time, the choice fell on the DataLine platform - with it we managed to draw up a contract that suits both parties, in which the necessary guarantees of uninterrupted work were written out on paper, and not voiced only in words.

In addition, unlike many Russian sites that only declare “compliance with TIER-3 standards,” DataLine data center actually passed the uptime certification of the Uptime Institute and is listed on the organization's website .



Description of certificates received by the data center

On the appointed day, our equipment was accepted on the site without unnecessary delays and bureaucracy, our stand was prepared several days before the main part of the equipment moved, we got remote access to the switches and were able to configure and check everything in advance.

When moving completely without emergency situations, it is almost impossible to do - this was also the case this time. It turned out that the change of DataLine engineers did not have enough power cables to connect our equipment - the ones that we brought with us did not fit the outlets installed on the site. It turned out all this already on the night of the move, but this did not prevent the data center team from obtaining permission to open the main warehouse to get the right amount of power cords - all this was done just by calling, without a long correspondence.

As a result, the move went without serious problems, and our customers received a higher level of service than before.

Conclusion: 3 tips for choosing a data center

In conclusion, we will give a few tips that will help avoid problems when choosing a Russian data center for infrastructure transportation:

• It is important to check the compliance of verbal promises with the text of the contract - a common problem in which sales managers for the sake of closing the transaction promise what the company cannot do. For example, guarantees of resiliency and high compensation for downtime - often the conditions voiced at the negotiations become much worse in the final text of the contract.
• The move should take place in several stages - as our experience has shown, you should not completely trust the new site immediately, if our move to the first data center was not divided into several stages, and if already at the very first there were no problems with the equipment import, then we would risk starting the work week offline.
• It is never too late to abandon the move - the data center for the IT project is one of the most important partners, so if you have doubts about the adequacy of the counterparty and the different approaches to work, as we have done, it is better to cancel the move. This will help to once again analyze the situation and find a truly suitable site.