Alot of people have been talking about taking out loans to start my own data center... but I've been thinking about recently doing the next best thing...

My father owns his own electrical contracting buisness, wich is on pretty solid footing now. He's been toying around with the idea of building an outcropping to the current site for more office space. If I can convince him to help expand my buisness by splitting costs with me, I might be able to get my own little data center section out of the deal....

Here's the current plan.

Two rack servers mirroring each other, around the $2000 mark, with 2 300 Gb hard drives, maby 3. We'll get buisness web hosting connections hooked up to the office with increased speed. All computers here will be surge protected properly, but one question remains... In case of power outage, what should I use as a backup power source?

I've learned from working here that generators arn't entirley reliable... If they go on running for too long, they have a tendancy to blow out the equipment they are powering... So, how do the proffesional data centers stay operational 24/7 with a power outage without the risk of a generator blowing out the servers?

Thanks

I'm confused, your father owns an electrical contracting business and you're asking others on backup power sources?

As for the answer, what about UPS's?

Personally, I wouldn't do this, there are a lot more aspects to having servers in your own control than just power, equipment, etc. It's too small to be doing as much as you want to IMO. Can you do all the networking?

What if some network equipment has issues at 3AM on a Friday night at the end of a tiring week? Will you have a replacement and be able to change it out?

Personally, I would find a reliable datacenter and use them, they'll have staff and replacement parts on site and available at any time.

Yep, we're already at a very well run data center..but eventually I'm going to want to go out on my own.. guess it runs in the familly of wanting to own your own buisness :)...

why not start by leasing space inside an establsihed datacenter? it doesn't seem to justified to have your own DC right away since

A. you don't know if you can get enought customers to cover the huge upfront cost of running a DC

B. leasing space in DC is much cheaper than owning your own and pay all those huge upfront cost without knowing if you can ever recover.

good luck tho

You are talking about 2-3 servers? Thats not much need for a DC, don't forget you have things like security, networking hardware, power (street and backup), A/C, server racks, staffing and many more smaller details. Its a lot of time and money for 2-3 servers don't you think?

I would think that with generators, you would have something that regulates the voltage coming off of the generator which should negate anything blowing up - which I'm sure is added expense. I been at places with both gas and battery powered backups. Our local cable company uses gas powered generators to produce power when power goes out (sure, you can't see the TV, but the cable still works!). I believe the Sprint switch where I worked for a short time also used diesel or natural gas generators. I've yet to see any type of mammoth battery backup that would be able to support high loads although I'm sure there is something out there.

Another consideration, although it wouldn't be too bad with just a couple of servers, is heat. Most large DCs have huge investments in air conditioning and cooling systems to keep the center running at machine tolerable levels.


You also have to look beyond this big step and look at how long you plan to stay there, how fast you plan to grow your business, if there would be further room for expansion to, say 15-20 racks and whether a telco has a big enough pipe to lay at your doorstep in your current location. Then you also have to consider that as you grow, the power company (or your dad, whoever would do it in your area) may have to add a bigger pipe as I'm sure they'd love the drain as your DC keeps humming along, sucking the life out of the grid..... The question is do you want to put all of your resources into starting this in one location when you may have to go somewhere else down the road when your business increases.