About Data Center

Data Processing Center – a building or part thereof, the primary function of which is the placement of equipment handling and storage of information, as well as engineering controls to keep its job.

History

Task of processing information were resolved at different times by different technical means. In XX century the electronic computing devices took over responsibility for large computing tasks, and the emergence of storage devices allowed to move from paper archives to the more compact tape and electronic media. Even for the placement of the first computers required the creation of special facilities – computer rooms, which supported certain climatic conditions, to prevent overheating of the equipment and ensure its stable operation.

Since the beginning of the era of personal computers and servers, compact computer hardware companies concentrated in the server rooms. In most cases, a server room in the company refers to a separate room, equipped with air conditioning and domestic uninterrupted power supply, which creates the minimum conditions for the continuous operation of equipment. Today, however, it is suitable only for those businesses whose business location processes are slightly dependent on computing resources and information.

The emergence of data centers

The data center is an enlarged copy of the server room. But there are some fundamental differences.

As soon as business information becomes a key factor in enterprise performance and reliability of corporate information infrastructure determines the continuity of business processes requires a different, more robust solution that imply a guaranteed power supply (diesel generator), uninterrupted power supply (UPS), precision air-conditioning control, integrated security system (gas fire fighting, smoke removal, fire alarm, access control and video surveillance), an automated dispatch system and monitoring equipment.

Thus, the need to establish and maintain [an] effective data center is when an enterprise is in a real need for continuity, manageability and scalability, as of the IT infrastructure depends on the stability of the business.

Why is a data center?

And then it’s time to consolidate the processing of data and centrally manage IT infrastructure and information systems – it is necessary to build a data center.

Consequently, the data center meets the following requirements of the market:

Significant increase in the amount of information;
Increase the number of used business applications;
Processing of data in far-flung divisions.

Who needs a data center?

In India, the first data centers began to emerge in the late 90s. Their customers were the banking industry, petroleum  industry companies and government agencies.

The data center can be designed for use by one company, and is multiuser. Multi-user data center presents a wide range of services including business continuity, hosting, rental server, server location.

So to summarize the above, how do companies need the data center:

Companies, which are critical:
Maximum degree of readiness,
Fault tolerance
Reliability of information systems;
Large companies, exploiting the complex business applications;
Operators of telecommunication services, banks, insurance companies, etc.;
Midsize and small businesses that can offer multi-data center.

What does the data center do?

The data center provides:

Consolidation of processing and storage;
Maintaining a given regime, automate business tasks of the enterprise;
Preservation of corporate information.

Requirements for the Data Center

No matter how skillfully and painstakingly the concept of a data center is developed, the most direct way to the success of the project and the economic efficiency of the data center during its operation depends upon the proper design and construction planning for a data center – so as to reduce the costs for the data center.

Global requirements

The global requirements are the principal regulations put into the data center architecture, its prospects of a data center must:

Find out the real need for the owner of the resource data center;
Business model of the data center;-
To determine the forecasts and data centers, respectively, stages of its large-scale expansion.

Reliability requirements

Getting data center design, you first need to determine what requirements are for business to the reliability of the information infrastructure.

These reliability requirements can be formalized by two parameters:

Time that has elapsed since the last save of data to the point of failure (obviously, all the transactions that have occurred in the system at this time, simply will not exist in your IT environment after recovery);
Recovery time of the system after a crash.

The sum of these two parameters is not working for the system time.

The parameters depend on a set of hardware and software solutions that are implemented in a data center.

The question of risks

There are three groups of risks that could potentially be a source of inconsistency of data center business and IT needs of the user:

Risk of downtime;
Associated with the planned prevention activities;
Related to unplanned events (failures in the network and equipment);
Risks of business and IT needs (business growth, changes in the requirements for the IT infrastructure);
Risk of downtime associated with the human factor.

In order to minimize these risks, the decision of the data center must meet three key requirements:

Performance;
Flexibility;
Simplicity.

Methods to reduce risk

To reduce the risk of downtime and provide the necessary level of efficiency data center should include:

Redundant systems (redundancy);
Fault-tolerant systems (the ability to work offline)

To reduce the risks of changes in infrastructure requirements and the flexibility to provide solutions to its scalability (ability to add modules to the IT and physical infrastructure)

To reduce the risks associated with the human factor, there should be ease of monitoring, control of the data center.

Conclusion

From a long time, issues of building data centers and similar facilities are reduced by finding the appropriate operational area for office space and an equally rapid adaptation to the tasks of IT services. But repetition is systematically encountered unforeseen situations caused by failures of design, have convinced experts that these issues deserve much more attention, knowledge and resource.

Building a data center must be taken seriously and methodically.