A Beginner’s Guide to Data Centres.

Back to Basics: What is a Data Centre?

We almost always refer to Support 247 as a third-party support provider. But a supporter of what? Well, we are a supporter of data centre services – meaning we take care of everything that goes into keeping an organisation’s storage, servers, and networking infrastructure up and running (as well as supporting many other individual devices such as laptops and printers).

So then, what is a data centre? Data lies at the centre of just about everything, and our world’s reliance on data is only going to intensify in the coming years. Let’s take a deep dive into the world where this data lives.

A Definition.

Data centres (or data centers) are centralised locations where computing, storage, and networking equipment are concentrated for the purpose of collecting, storing, processing, distributing, or allowing access to large amounts of data.

• Compute : The memory and processing power to run the applications, generally provided by high-end servers
• Storage : Important enterprise data is generally housed in a data centre, on media ranging from tape to solid-state drives, with multiple backups
• Networking : Interconnections between data centre components and to the outside world, including routers, switches, application-delivery controllers, and more

An Image.

A data centre’s design is based on a network of computing and storage resources that enable the delivery of shared applications and data. In the days of the room-sized behemoths that were our early computers, a data centre might have consisted of one supercomputer. But as equipment got smaller and cheaper, and data processing needs amplified, engineers began networking multiple servers together to increase processing power. Today, we see large numbers of these clustered servers and related equipment housed in closets, rooms, entire buildings, or even groups of buildings.

A Purpose.

Because they house an organisation’s most critical and proprietary assets, data centres are vital to the continuity of daily business operations. Just about every enterprise and government entity requires its own data centre for the purpose of accessing and processing their data. Some build and maintain them in-house, which is referred to as on-premise, others rent out space and servers at colocation facilities, and some use public cloud-based services from hosts like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. Between individual databases, cloud, on-premise, and hybrid deployment options, the data centre landscape is a labyrinth of choices.

Information security is another explanation for the existence, location, and layout of today’s data centres. A data centre must offer a secure environment that minimises the chances of a security breach. On a very basic level, data centre security is all about restricting and managing access. That includes both the tangible “things” put in place to accomplish that goal (such as locked access points, surveillance systems, or security personnel) and the intangible “controls” that manage them (such as security policies, access lists, or rules for handling data).

A Future – Challenges Going Forward.

The future of data centres looks a lot different than it does today. Infrastructure is shifting from traditional on-premise servers to virtual networks that support applications and workloads across pools of physical infrastructure, and into a multi cloud environment. But are businesses ready for this transformation? Not entirely.

For one, there’s a lack of readiness to upgrade the data centre. Businesses are not ready, or simply unwilling, to upgrade infrastructure just yet. Forbes Insights found that very few organisations are ready to rethink data centre strategy and evolve their operations in the next five years. Why? Well, most IT professionals say it’s difficult enough to manage their current bandwidth needs, much less the bandwidth requirements of tomorrow.

And two, the industry faces a very real staffing challenge: data centre staff are aging faster than the equipment. It has been estimated that organisations could lose up to 16% of their infrastructure workforce in the next five years. This raises a critical issue: companies are facing a brain drain right as they aim to adapt the data centre to disruptive forces. In turn, many engineers are already aiming to preserve their value in a variety of ways—from interacting with cloud providers to working with more lines of business.

The Data Centre is not dead.

At its simplest, a data centre is the physical facility that organisations use to house their critical applications and data. But data centres are so much more than that, and they’re here to stay.

As a data-hungry species, our demand for processing power, storage space, and information in general is only growing, and constantly threatening to outstrip our ability to deliver. With over 175 zettabytes of data expected by 2025, data centres will continue to play a vital role in the ingestion, computation, storage, and management of information. And as long as we crave data, we will always require data centres in some form or another.

Support 247 can help with all your Data Centre support needs.

To find out how your Data Centre can benefit from the many perks of third party support, speak to one of our experienced, professional team - contact us here.