1. It’s Extremely Expensive
Do you know the cost of building and running a data center? You’re almost certainly wrong. Underestimating the costs of building your own data center is one of the first and most common mistakes companies make. There are several things to take into consideration when planning the construction of your own data center; engineering, permits and approvals, power systems, generators with enclosures, conduit and cabling for generators, data center lighting, lighting protection, HVAC, fire suppression, and the list goes on and on. As you can see, these costs can add up quickly.
2. The Resale Value is Horrible
Recouping investments by selling the equipment later is a key part of investment calculations. Unfortunately, servers are like cars and the equipment inside the data center would be tough to resell at a decent price. As soon as they are purchased, their value goes down. You will never sell any of the servers or parts for more than a small fraction of what you paid.
3. Running a Data Center Is as Expensive as Building It
Once you build your data center, you need to pay even more to keep it running. Your electricity bill alone will be a huge expense. Add in the cost of staffing the center, maintaining your broadband connectivity, running network cables, and what you have isn’t a data center, it’s a serious resource sink.
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4. You’ll Need to Build It Again
Servers get out of date as fast as any other computer – which means to remain at optimal performance you need to replace them every three years. However, replacing your servers isn’t like replacing your desktop. If you try to pull the old servers out and plug the new servers in, you are going to cause extensive downtime. To avoid causing downtime, you need to build a second configuration, install your new servers in it, and migrate all your programs and files over. Then you can safely uninstall the old servers.
5. The Cost of Security
Many businesses think having their own data center will protect their data. They’re wrong. Owning the data center doesn’t guarantee data security; if you want security you need to pay for it. Paying your own highly-trained security team is far more expensive than paying for hosting on professionally secured servers. And, when you do pay for your own security team, there is no guarantee you will actually get better security.
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6. Data Centers Require Unique Skills
Managing a data center requires someone who knows how. This is not something you can afford to learn by doing. If you don’t have someone on staff who has previously worked in data center management, don’t even think of managing your own.
7. You Have Better Options
Would you build a new office building when the perfect building for your company is already available to lease or buy? Probably not. You wouldn’t spend that kind of money unless you had to. So why are you thinking of building your own data center? You have three other options, all of which will meet your needs at less cost than building your own data center. You can:
- Lease space on physical servers at a professional hosting center.
- Lease space in a colocation facility, where you can put your own servers in an already-built data center and only pay for the power and resources you need.
- Use cloud-based servers, which can scale up or down as needed so you never need to worry about paying for space you aren’t using – or needing more space in a hurry and not having it.
