Simply put, it’s the central physical facility that holds data and applications for an organization. Typically, it includes multiple storage and computing resources, including (but not limited to) servers, firewalls, routers, and switches. Networking is needed to make it work efficiently.
See how the team at Ridge explains it:
IT infrastructure, power consumption, and security requirements of a typical data center are very high, as it houses business-critical resources and data that cannot be compromised.
In this guide, we’ll discuss all aspects related to these giant ecosystems, i.e., data centers, from their evolution from architecture to cloud deployments. We’ll discuss usage, standards, benefits, and implementations as well as data center basic knowledge.
Data centers date back to the time when computers were the size of a big room. In the 1940s, their development, setup, and running costs were too high to be considered as practical for commercial or personal usage. However, national data centers were in use for projects of national importance, for example, the National Climatic Data Center was established in 1970.
The 1980s marked the advent of micro-computing technology. As expected, it changed data centers significantly — from component size to storage capacity.
Modern data deployments are far more efficient than traditional data centers. Previously, it was common for organizations to house their data center installations on-premises. Today, however, companies can now move their data off company property and use the cloud, saving on setup and maintenance costs.
What are the Major Differences Between Traditional vs. Modern Data Centers?
● In a traditional data center, data is stored on physical hardware servers, whereas a modern data center stores data in the cloud.
● Companies that maintain and update the hardware and networking arrangements in a traditional data center typically cover these costs themselves. On the other hand, with cloud-based data centers, these costs are covered by the data center service provider.
● A traditional data center system uses an internal network to ensure round-the-clock uptime and accessibility. By contrast, accessibility to a cloud/multi-cloud/edge data center ecosystem relies on an internet connection.
● In a traditional data center setup, migrating data is costly, time-consuming, and can pose security risks, while for a cloud-based system, data migration is easier and more secure.
An Overview of Major Differences that Separate Traditional Data Centers From the Modern Versions:
What Are Data Centers Used For?
Typically, data centers are used for:
● Storing and managing user data for backup, immediate access, or recovery
● Customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and other business applications for data management
● Data-oriented applications, like e-commerce apps, databases, games, etc.
● Communication and collaboration systems
● Applications utilizing Big Data that requires a lot of storage space
● Solutions that need real-time access to manage and modify the data in multiple locations
How Does A Data Center Work?
Now that we’ve answered your question, “What is a data center?” and why you might need one, let’s understand how it works.
A data center has three components:
Storage Devices:, e.g., servers, arranged in racks to hold its most precious asset — data;
Networking: devices, such as routers, switches, firewalls, and cables provide flawless data movement and connectivity across the system;
Applications: These ensure optimal utilization of the storage and networking devices.
These data center infrastructure core components then combine with environmental control systems, risk mitigation systems, power supply, and other support components to work finely without service interruptions.
Data Center Infrastructure — What Are The Standards?
There are numerous network and application delivery appliances that are put together to build an enterprise-grade data center.
The most widely considered data center infrastructure standard is ANSI/TIA-942 that defines four data center tiers:
Tier 1 data centers are for basic sites and must protect data against physical data breaches with several limits. Tier 1 resources follow a non-redundant path and utilize single capacity data center components in the network.
Datacenter Redundancy means a system design with duplicated components used to back up business operations in case of component failures. A non-redundant path means that there is no duplicate component or arrangement for duplicating.
Tier 2 data centers have better physical safety arrangements due to their redundant-capacity components. This site infrastructure, similar to a tier 1 data center, can work using one non-redundant distribution path.
Tier 3 data centers must provide complete security to the data and applications housed in it. Numerous independent distribution paths and redundant-capacity components are built into the level 3 data center infrastructure.
Tier 4 data center deployment is specifically designed to ensure no faults. Its extreme level of fault-tolerance and redundancy is achieved through the placement of numerous redundant-capacity components and independent distribution paths. Its chief advantages are high scalability, easy manageability, and negligible downtime are the advantages of this enterprise-ready data center architecture.
What Are The Different Types Of Data Centers?
A data center’s classification differs with service models, how space is shared between organizations, costs, network topology, the computing and storage devices it uses, and several other aspects. Broadly, there are four types of data centers:
1. Enterprise data centers
Large-sized organizations often prefer to build cloud or on-premise data centers that are fully owned and managed by their company. These systems are expensive, highly customized, and optimized as per the business’s needs.
2. Managed-services data centers
In the case of managed-services data centers, the network architecture and management are the responsibility of third-party service providers. A third-party managed service platform can operate a private data center.
3. Colocation data centers
What if you want to control your data center fully, but do not have (or do not want to own) all the resources and space for hosting it on-premises?
Colo, or colocation data centers are leased data spaces off of company premises. However, servers, firewalls, storage, and other IT components are owned by the organization. Risk prevention and security implementations, alongside the building itself, bandwidth, equipment for cooling, and physical security, are a third-party’s responsibility.
4. Cloud data centers
Cloud data centers are fully managed by third-parties and utilize data center dynamic management to avoid failure of any kind. In this case, storage space, data, and applications are located off company premises.
You can use cloud services without worrying about safeguarding and managing the data center because the cloud data center service provider is responsible for all of those functions. Ridge is one such provider for virtual data center solutions.
Data Center Challenges and Solutions in Cloud Computing
Establishing and managing a data center involves multiple challenges. For example, ensuring high availability, preventing downtime during maintenance, adding cooling deployments, buying data center physical space, paying energy costs, hiring IT staff, and so on. Cloud Computing, through the cloud data centers, solves all these problems.
Third-party service providers take care of all those functions. In exchange, they charge a nominal service fee, which is relatively low compared to what physical data centers cost to maintain. Learn more about the benefits of cloud computing in this article: What is cloud computing.
Benefits Of Cloud Data Centers
Every day, more and more companies are migrating to the cloud due to the benefits it offers. According to a Synergy Research Group report, spending on hardware and software to establish physical data centers has decreased to under 90 billion USD overall. On the other hand, spending on cloud deployments has increased from $25 billion to more than $125 billion since 2016, showing how speedily the market for cloud computing is growing.
The Major Benefits of Cloud Data Centers are:
● Optimal use of computing resources through secure sharing: Unlike on-premises hardware and software resources reserved for single business use, cloud-based systems provide for efficient sharing of components.
● No unnecessary spending on hardware purchases and upgrades: As cloud deployment shares resources, no extra hardware purchases are required when companies wish to increase the size of their data center.
● Safety arrangement to avoid catastrophic data loss: Copies of data and applications are managed and regularly updated. This way, if there is a catastrophe that destroys one remote datacenter, the data will still remain intact.
● No major investment: Businesses buy monthly or yearly plans to use cloud data center services instead of putting down CapEx to build a physical data center.
● Larger data availability range for the remote users in the organization: Physical data centers sometimes restrict external access by adding IP constraints. However, cloud centers are generally login-based to provide remote employees with simple access.
● Quick deployment: As there is no physical construction, networking, or deployment, you can just choose a suitable service provider and begin to work.
● No need for keeping a big IT team for maintenance and security: Cloud service providers have their own teams to manage your data center.
● Better services to clients across the globe through distributed servers: By choosing the virtual data centers located near to your customers’ geo-locations, you can improve the user experience by ensuring fast response times due to reduced latency.
● Scalable and flexible IT infrastructure: With cloud data centers, a plan upgrade allows simple scaling without hardware purchases, land contracts, and deployment professionals.
Data Centers and Ridge
Ridge has a massive network of data centers running in local cloud environments distributed all over the world. Through its network, it offers a full cloud experience across all dedicated and shared environments, basically on any infrastructure in any location. Users can thus be cloud-native anywhere on the planet, with the ease of use of the public cloud and the performance of localized infrastructure.
Ridge transforms heterogeneous infrastructure into a homogeneous cloud computing platform, which can support the delivery of cloud-native services in proximity to end-users. It is designed to be interoperable with any private, hybrid cloud, or multi-cloud architecture. Because it sits on existing infrastructure, it doesn’t require any additional capital expenditure. Resources are shared so multiple users can run at same time.
By enabling clients to access its managed web services on a massively distributed network of data centers, Ridge enables them to deploy and scale cloud-native workloads in the location of their preference. Among other benefits, this reduces application latency, resolves throughput limitations, and achieves compliance with country-specific regulations and data sovereignty laws.
Data Center FAQs
What is inside a data center?
A data center contains a network of networking, security, and storage equipment, including servers, routers, firewalls, switches, physical safety appliances, application delivery controllers, and different specialized equipment depending upon its usage.
What is the difference between data center vs cloud?
A data center refers to the physical establishment that stores data and applications, whereas the cloud, is the computing method or technology that allows companies to use off-premise data or applications online.
Is a data center a private cloud?
A data center could be a private cloud, a public cloud, a hybrid cloud, an edge computing-enabled geo-distributed cloud, or an on-premise data center, depending upon how it is designed, networked, and secured.
Why is data center security important?
Data centers generally keep confidential organizational data, crucial user data, and important applications that affect a business directly. Physical or cyber threats to any of these are troublesome for enterprises, so keeping it secure is a major responsibility.
Where are cloud servers physically located?
Cloud servers have their servers and resources pooled in “server farms” located around the world. They host data and applications for various users and deliver them to authenticated users on demand. You can learn more about this in our article on location in cloud computing.
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