Choosing A New Jersey Data Center – A Straightforward Guide

New Jersey is small in size but mighty in economic power and more affordable than nearby New York. This means that there can be a lot of benefits to implementing a New Jersey data center. Here is a quick guide to what you need to know.

Why choose a New Jersey data center?

Probably the most obvious reason for choosing a New Jersey data center is to be able to deliver the best possible service to the residents of the state (both personal and business). Although New Jersey is one of the smallest states in the USA, it consistently has one of the largest populations. This means that it has a very high population density.

New Jersey can also be a convenient base from which to connect with nearby states, most obviously New York. The big advantage of this approach is that the cost of real estate in New Jersey is much lower than the cost of (comparable) real estate in New York. This can make it much more economical to run a New Jersey data center than one in New York.

It’s also worth noting that being in New Jersey offers a very similar range of benefits to being in New York. In particular, New Jersey also benefits from robust physical and digital infrastructure. The climate is very similar to New York and it is also relatively straightforward to find skilled workers.

What to look for in a New Jersey data center

Here are the five key points you should generally cover when looking for a New Jersey data center.

Type of data center

Your four main options are enterprise, colocation, managed-services, and cloud. Some data centers offer more than one service type. In particular, it’s quite common for colocation data centers also to function as managed-services data centers.

Security and compliance requirements

Although security is the basis for compliance, often the best way to form an accurate initial judgement of a data vendor’s security is to look at the compliance programs they support. Another benefit of checking a vendor’s compliance status early is that it will allow you to eliminate them quickly if they do not support programs you need.

Reliability

Reliability is usually indicated by the uptime percentage. This is the percentage of time a data center is expected to remain operational over a stated period. These days, it should usually be close to 100%. In fact, it’s becoming increasingly common for data centers to offer a 100% uptime guarantee.

Even if a New Jersey data center does offer a contractual uptime guarantee, it’s still advisable to check the vendor’s credentials for meeting it. This can be done by looking at their historical performance data and their tier rating. You should also check their protocols for business continuity and disaster recovery.

Infrastructure

Your infrastructure requirements will depend on the type of data center you choose. Generally, however, you will need to check at least one of the following.

Network connectivity: In addition to checking speed and latency, it’s advisable to check the finer details of the New Jersey data center vendor’s infrastructure. At a minimum, you will need to check if they are carrier-neutral. Carrier neutrality guarantees you the flexibility to choose the best carrier(s) for your situation. It’s also advisable to check their support for interconnectivity and multicloud solutions.

Energy and climate control: Getting a reliable source of mains power is unlikely to be an issue. You will, however, need to check the vendor’s preparedness for extreme weather. This is unusual in New Jersey but it does happen. The main risks are heavy snow and strong winds, both of which can lead to flooding. The vendor will also need to be able to manage the heat and humidity of New Jersey summers.

Hardware and configurations: What specific hardware does (or can) the vendor provide and what scope do you have to customize the configuration? Also, check how easy it is to scale hardware up and down in line with your business cycles.

Location

Data centers are housed in physical buildings. This means that the practicalities of real estate are inevitably going to play a major role in their effectiveness and cost. As a rule of thumb, locations that have the best facilities tend to charge a premium for this. It’s therefore important to be clear on what level of infrastructure you need and where you can compromise.

For example, if you need to deliver the very fastest level of service, then you will probably have to accept the cost of using a New Jersey data center near a major network hub. If, by contrast, speed is less of an issue, then you could potentially save money by locating further away from the main network hotspots.