Choosing A Waco Data Center – What To Look For

If you’re looking to serve the state of Texas or even the broader southeast then a Waco data center could be a very astute choice, particularly if you’re on a tight budget. Here is a quick guide to what you need to know.

Why choose a Waco data center

One of the main reasons for choosing a Waco data center is that Waco is roughly an equal distance from Dallas and Fort Worth, Austin, and Houston. It is only slightly further away from San Antonio.

This means that implementing a Waco data center gives you great connectivity in all of Texas’ key economic hubs. Waco could also be a feasible option for serving neighboring states such as New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana.

Furthermore compared to larger metropolitan areas, Waco may offer cost-effective solutions for data center operations. Lower real estate and operational costs can contribute to more budget-friendly options without compromising on the quality of services.

Despite being outside the main cities, Waco benefits from the general advantages of being in Texas. These include low energy costs, a benign climate, a high level of safety, robust infrastructure, access to skilled workers, and a business-friendly state government.

How to choose a Waco data center

The basic process of choosing a Waco data center is essentially the same as the process for choosing a data center in any other location. First, you specify your needs, wants, priorities, and budget. Second, you create a shortlist of facilities that look like they could meet your needs. Third, you evaluate the data centers and their vendors. Here is a quick overview of the process.

Creating your specification for a Waco data center

Your specification for a Waco data center should generally cover these five key points.

Business requirements

Your starting point is to define the business goals that the data center aims to support.
Outline the critical applications, services, and functions that the data center will host.

You will also need to establish the criteria by which the success of the Waco data center will be evaluated and the process for determining, recording, and reporting on them. Part of this will involve establishing documentation practices for the entire data center lifecycle.

Once this is done, set the framework for reviewing and approving the data center specification. This will require you to identify the key stakeholders and their roles in this process.

Budget and timeline

Your budget and timeline will be the main constraints in your search for a Waco data center. It’s therefore important to set them as accurately as possible. For your budget, it’s advisable to separate upfront (implementation) costs from ongoing (operational) costs. Remember to allow for your future needs and wants (insofar as you can reasonably predict them).

Security and compliance measures

The compliance programs and data security frameworks a Waco data center can support will tell you a lot about their security measures. A vendor should also be happy to give you a reasonable amount of detail about them.

This should include an overview of their business continuity and disaster recovery measures. In particular, they should be able to explain their process for ensuring that your data is kept safe.

Technical requirements

Specify the necessary computing power, storage capacity, and network bandwidth. Go into as much detail as you can. For example, define server hardware, performance, and scalability requirements. Once you have done this, you will be able to specify your power requirements along with the optimum operating temperature and humidity.

During this process, you may wish to specify minimum, preferred, and ideal requirements. If you find yourself pushing the limits of your budget, this may help you to deploy it most effectively.

Vendor and service provider requirements

What are you going to do in-house and what are you going to have a third party do for you? What expectations do you have of the third party (or -parties)? At a minimum, you will need to specify the level of reliability you require from a Waco data center. This is usually expressed as an uptime guarantee.

Evaluating the Waco data center facility

When you come to evaluating Waco data center facilities, you should already have determined that they meet your minimum standards. This means that, to a large extent, what you are really evaluating is the location. Given that the location has a strong influence on both the practicality and cost of any property, it’s worth evaluating it thoroughly.

Evaluating the Waco data center facility vendor

It’s advisable to look for a Waco data center facility vendor with a clear “customer-first” attitude. In particular, you want a vendor that supports flexibility, customizability, and scalability. You also want a vendor with a transparent pricing structure and minimal to no commitment to use their preferred vendors.