How to choose the right Australian data centre

As rack, stack and cable-style deployments become rarer, many resellers and system integrators are looking to diversify into managed services. But services still need hardware to run on. If you’re not going purely public cloud, where do you put your gear?

Luckily, there is a host of co-location providers gunning for channel business. Many are elevating themselves from simple real estate agents to full-blown vendors in their own right, courting partners with proper enablement programs.

CRN spoke to a range of co-location providers with facilities in Australia to find out what’s available and how you should go about selecting a co-location partner for your managed services business.

Inside this article:

• NextDC
• Equinix
• Digital Realty
• Vocus
• GlobalSwitch

Choosing a co-location provider

There is a huge number of variables to consider when investigating which co-location facility is the ideal home for your IT environment. While each scenario is unique, there are some key factors to consider when making your choice

1. Location

One obvious constraint on your options is the location of data centre facilities. Sydney and Melbourne, as Australia’s most populous cities, have the most variety and the largest capacities, but there are options for other locations such as Canberra, Brisbane and Perth. Be aware of how close, or how far away, a facility needs to be for customers. Replication software often has requirements on low-latency – meaning closer is better – but disaster recovery requirements often mandate a minimum safe distance.

2. Capacity

The second major consideration is your capacity and scale requirement. Do you need three rack units, or three rows of racks? Two kilowatts of power, or a few hundred? Options for large-scale deployments are limited outside Sydney and Melbourne, but smaller footprint requirements can make some of the larger facilities less appealing.

3. Interconnect

Another major consideration is your interconnection requirement. Do you need  to use AWS DirectConnect, Azure ExpressRoute or other public cloud high-speed interconnections? Do you need to inter-connect to a lot of other providers to create a bundled service? The network interconnection options will likely feature more highly if this is the case, compared to providing a self-contained service to specific customers.

Next: NextDC