Data center (virtual or physical) is a rationalized repository for the management, storage, and distribution of the information and data organized pertaining to a particular business.
Most of the data centers are “in-house” and located within the organization’s premises. If they are outsourced i.e., located in a third-party company’s site and managed there, then they are often regarded as collocation/co-location centers. These co-location centers are associated with collocation hosting services in which they take the complete responsibility of maintaining and monitoring the organization’s data center needs.
Based on the size of organization or company, the data center may be a simple rack of equipment or it can be a big room that houses many racks of servers and other equipment.
Below are few points that should be considered while selecting the right data center for your organization:
Location of data center: Choosing the right location to place the data center is a crucial thing for any organization because,
Whenever the need of up-gradation of service or equipment arises, it should be possible for someone to go easily and perform the desired task.
It should be in a place that is less prone to natural disasters like earth quakes, hurricanes, floods etc.
Also, it should be in a location where the availability of power supply and communication media are consistently stable.
Security: Data center should be adequately guarded in order to protect the information from theft and physical damages.
Scalability: Data centers should have additional space along with other spare equipment to address the needs that may arise during business expansion.
Redundant power supply: Web servers and other network equipment in the data center consumes large amount of power as they are always connected to the internet and function continuously. So, a data center requires reliable power supply that may not be entirely expected from the local power utilities. For this reason, the data center should always have redundant power supply.
Cooling provision: Equipment such as web servers and other network devices produces heat when operating. So, for drawing effective work from the equipment, necessary cooling should be provided inside the data center.
Reliable technical support: Appropriate amounts of staff with good technical skills should be employed to resolve the technical issues that may arise such as connectivity problems, secure data management, backups etc.
Data centers are a key place for most business organizations because it is the one that serves and secures all the data; and performs the key functions of their businesses. So, selecting the right data center and taking proper care of it is critical to any technology or internet business.
