A data center is a facility that centralizes an organization’s IT operations and equipment, and where it stores, manages, and disseminates its data. Data centers house a network’s most critical systems and are vital to the continuity of daily operations. Consequentially, the security and reliability of data centers and their information is a top priority for organizations. 

An organization may build a data center to provide open access to applications over the Internet, Or for privately executing business applications within its operational environment. A data center May be constructed in-house and located in an organization’s own facility, or it may be Outsourced, with equipment being located at a third-party site. Large organizations often maintain Multiple data centers to distribute data-processing workloads and for disaster recovery.

Organizations are increasingly focusing on energy-efficient technologies and efficient management Practices to reduce the energy consumption of data centers and lessen the impact on the Environment. Such data centers are called as “green data centers”.

A data center typically comprises the following:

  • IT equipment: It includes equipment such as compute systems, storage systems, and network Equipment and cables, and cabinets for housing the IT equipment.
  • Facility: It is the building and floor space where the data center is constructed. It typically has a raised floor with ducts underneath holding power and network cables.
  • Support infrastructure: It includes all the equipment necessary to securely sustain the Functioning of the data center. Some key support equipment are power equipment including Uninterruptible power sources, and power generators; environmental control equipment Including fire and water detection systems, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning Systems; and security systems including bio-metrics, access card, and video surveillance systems.

Key Characteristics of a Data Center

Data centers are designed and built to fulfill the key characteristics as explained below,

  • Availability: Availability of information as and when required should be ensured. Unavailability of information can severely affect business operations, lead to substantial financial losses, and damage the reputation of an organization.
  • Scalability: Organizations may need to deploy additional resources such as compute systems, new applications, and databases to meet the growing requirements. Data center resources should scale to meet the changing requirements, without interrupting current business operations.
  • Capacity: Data center operations require adequate resources to efficiently store and process large and increasing amounts of data. When capacity requirements increase, additional capacity should be provided either without interrupting the availability or with minimal disruption. Capacity may be managed by adding new resources or by reallocating existing resources.
  • Security: Policies and procedures should be established, and control measures should be implemented to prevent unauthorized access to and alteration of information.
  • Manageability: A data center should provide easy, flexible, and integrated management of all its components. Efficient manageability can be achieved through automation for reducing manual intervention in common, repeatable tasks.
  • Performance: Data center components should provide optimal performance based on the required service levels.
  • Data integrity: Data integrity refers to mechanisms, such as error correction codes or parity bits, which ensure that data is stored and retrieved exactly as it was received.

Key Data Center Management Processes

The activities carried out to ensure the efficient functioning of a data center can be broadly categorized under the following key management processes:

  • Monitoring: It is a continuous process of gathering information on various resources in the data center. The process involves monitoring parameters such as configuration, availability, capacity, performance, and security of resources.
  • Reporting: It is a process of collating and presenting the monitored parameters such as resource performance, capacity, and utilization of resources. Reporting enables data center managers to analyze and improve the utilization of data center resources and identify problems. It also helps in establishing business justifications and chargeback of costs associated with data center operations.
  • Provisioning: It is the process of configuring and allocating the resources that are required to carry out business operations. For example, compute systems are provisioned to run applications and storage capacity is provisioned to a compute system. Provisioning primarily includes resource management activities to meet capacity, availability, performance, and security requirements.
  • Planning: It is a process of estimating the amount of IT resources required to support business operations and meet the changing resource requirements. Planning leverages the data collected during monitoring and enables improving the overall utilization and performance of resources. It also enables estimation of future resource requirements. Data center managers also determine the impact of incidents and devise contingency plans to resolve them.
  • Maintenance: It is a set of standard repeatable activities for operating the data center. It involves ensuring the proper functioning of resources and resolving incidents such as malfunctions, outages, and equipment loss. It also involves handling identified problems or issues within the data center and incorporating changes to prevent future problem occurrence.