See the vXchnge Difference at Our National Colocation Data Centers
By: Kaylie Gyarmathy on November 24, 2020
Growth is an important goal for almost any business. Consistent business growth can help companies attract new investors and talent, improve profits, and create some breathing room for emergencies—after all, losing a client/customer isn’t nearly as worrying for businesses with 10,000 accounts as they are for ones with 50 accounts.However, growth is more than just adding new accounts and new employees—it means being able to scale all operations in the business. In today’s business environment, this often means having strong network scalability.
Why is network scalability important? How can you test your IT systems to determine what you need to do to achieve scalability? How do legacy systems affect your IT scalability?
Scalability is a measure of how easily a business unit or process can be upscaled/increased or downscaled/decreased. Network scalability specifically references how easy it is for a business to add or remove bandwidth or processing capacity to their systems to keep up with demand without overspending.
Scalability for a network matters because:
Long story short: having some IT flexibility can be incredibly valuable for any business. With the ability to scale easily to meet network infrastructure requirements, businesses can ensure stability, avoid service disruptions, and control costs.
Scalability testing is a method of testing IT systems at their “maximum” and “minimum” operating capacities to determine how the system may need to be modified to allow for projected growth. As noted by SoftwareTestingHelp.com, testing can occur at “the software, hardware and database levels. Once the maximum load is found out, developers need to respond appropriately to ensure that the system is scalable after a particular load.”
Some elements of the network infrastructure that a scalability test might assess include:
The basic process for conducting scalability tests is relatively simple, though it may require specialized tools and the use of a secondary production environment to avoid causing disruptions while the test is being conducted:
With the advent of cloud computing models, scaling a business network has become significantly easier than it was in years past. For many businesses, scaling their network infrastructure is a simple matter of contacting their cloud application vendor and increasing their cloud app spend. However, this isn’t always the case.
Some businesses rely heavily on legacy systems that aren’t designed around a distributed cloud application service model. Instead, these systems were built around the assumption of a closed network or the use of a specific operating system (OS) and may not work with different architectures.
Managing legacy systems when planning for scalability can be difficult, but it is possible. Some things to keep in mind when dealing with these systems include the need to:
One of the simplest ways to scale up a business’ network infrastructure is to add new data centers (or to upgrade an existing data center with newer, more powerful servers). However, adding more data centers internally can be a major expense and challenge. Additionally, once this extra infrastructure is added, it can’t be removed—so this isn’t an ideal solution for addressing seasonal spikes in infrastructure use.
Yet, when cloud computing services don’t offer apps and solutions that work with your existing legacy systems, it may feel like you don’t have any other choice than to build infrastructure internally. However, there is another choice: using collocated data centers that combine the benefits of cloud computing with the control of having your own network infrastructure.
With vXchnge, you can easily access a “colocation data center” environment where you have complete control and visibility. Our in\site platform acts as the key to our Data Center-as-a-Service (DCaaS) model—providing infrastructure management and intelligent monitoring solutions in a convenient mobile app you can access anytime and anywhere you have an internet connection.
Make network scalability simple while maintaining strict control of your network environment by leveraging the power of vXchnge’s collocated data centers! Reach out to vXchnge today to learn more.
As the Marketing Manager for vXchnge, Kaylie handles the coordination and logistics of tradeshows and events. She is responsible for social media marketing and brand promotion through various outlets. She enjoys developing new ways and events to capture the attention of the vXchnge audience.
Use this checklist to help protect your investment, mitigate potential risk and minimize downtime during your data center migration.