Data center

Every second, millions of users across various technological devices generate vast amounts of data. With this continuous data creation, there is an enormous global requirement for data processing and storage. Data centers address this need by offering specially designed facilities for managing and processing data efficiently.

Discover what data centers are and how they enable organizations worldwide to manage their data.

What are data centers?

Data centers definition: A data center is a physical facility housing computer equipment that processes data.

This specialized facility includes computer systems and associated components, such as storage and networking equipment, to process, store and manage vast amounts of data. Data centers are essential for supporting data-intensive workloads and enabling organizations to efficiently handle their data processing and storage needs.

Processing large amounts of data that are produced by individual technology users and computer systems requires an enormous amount of computing power. With millions of us always connected to the digital sphere and with highly complex programs capable of generating a wide variety of data, the data demands of major organizations can be massive.

Data centers are an essential part of large organizations’ IT infrastructure, allowing for data to be properly generated, processed, stored and backed u p. Without them, valuable data would be lost, and organizations would struggle to analyze their data to better understand consumer and user behavior, intent and requirements.

One of the most valuable benefits of using data centers is the ability to back up key data. In case of power outages or unforeseen issues, the data is safely backed up, ensuring nothing is lost.

Similarly, when large organizations outsource their data management, they can be assured of legal compliance. Although some major businesses own their data centers, most organizations outsource this function to save on setup costs and take advantage of specialized expertise.

Data centers are typically managed by external experts in facilities that are specially designed to maintain high-end technological equipment and safeguard against data loss. With temperature control and backup power supplies, the machines powering heavy computational workloads can work at full capacity.

How do data centers work?

Data centers essentially work by housing a large number of high-level computers in a single facility with the ideal conditions. These facilities annex computer processing to a single location where computers may work continuously to process and organize data.

The infrastructure of most data centers comprises three aspects: computing, storing and networking. By connecting these three aspects in a way that drives efficiency and effective data storage, organizations can build and personalize their data centers.

Data center servers

Data center servers handle the bulk of the data processing within the computing infrastructure. Servers are extremely powerful computer systems that process, organize and store data that is fed into the data center.

There are a few different types of data center servers. Rack servers are flat and rectangular and typically stored in cabinets. These servers are particularly space-efficient and allow for simple scaling as a data center grows. Blade servers are even more space-saving, consolidating multiple servers into a single unit. They are also more economical regarding power consumption.

Data center storage

Once the data has been processed, it must be properly organized and stored to ensure efficient and effective recall. Storage systems are essentially large data memory systems designed to hold large quantities of data in databases, and these databases are typically optimized for particular data types.

Within the servers themselves, there is usually some local storage. This is where the most frequently accessed data is stored, allowing for quicker retrieval. For most data, however, either network attached storage or storage area network configurations are used.

• Network attached storage (NAS) provides data storage to multiple servers using Ethernet connections. The NAS device connects to a separate storage server, which has either data center SSD memory or HDD memory. NAS devices can also be used at home, offering an effective personal data storage solution.
• Storage area networks (SAN) are another shared storage method and use a separate network for data. This method is more complicated, using a chain of servers and software.

Data center networks

Networking within data centers refers to how servers and devices are connected to each another. The connections between servers and storage devices dictate how data flows and is retrieved.

The infrastructure of data center networks is composed of networking equipment like switches, routers, cables and firewalls.

What is the history of data centers?

Data centers have been around for a long time. In the mid-20th century, as computers became more sophisticated and capable of performing more tasks, increasing amounts of data needed to be processed.

• 1940s, early data centers: Early computers could only do relatively simple operations, and they generated much less data. Consequently, data centers were also less complex and operated in a straightforward manner. The data center infrastructure was more physical, with large components and many cables within the systems.
• 1980s, computing growth: Throughout the 1980s, computing saw a massive increase in funding, functionality and everyday use. More and more businesses and homes relied on computer systems. So more computers meant more data.
• Late 1990s, impact of the internet: As the internet grew in importance and use, the demand for fast internet networks and connectivity created the need for internet data centers (IDCs). These IDCs provided enhanced data processing and backup.
• 2020s, AI data center: With the advent of artificial intelligence (AI), there has been a significant shift from CPU-centric workloads to memory and GPU-centric workloads. AI workloads demand high-performance computing, which relies heavily on GPUs and advanced memory solutions to handle complex computations efficiently. This shift has driven data centers to evolve, becoming more efficient and sophisticated to meet these new demands.

The rise of the internet in the late 1990s marked the beginning of exponential growth in data consumption, creation and requirements. Since the early 2000s and through the late 2010s and early 2020s, the growing use of the internet, mobile devices, PCs and connected devices of all kinds means that vast amounts of data are being generated each second.

With more data generation comes the increased requirement for data processing and data storage. Data centers are continuously tasked with becoming more effective and power efficient.

What are key types of data centers?

Based on their needs, users may prefer cloud data centers, on-premises data centers or colocation data centers.

• Cloud technology generally refers to anything that can be accessed through an internet connection alone, without the need to be physically connected to a server.
  
  It involves the on-demand delivery of computing resources, such as servers, storage, databases, networking, software and analytics over the internet. Cloud technology can provide greater flexibility, scalability and cost-efficiency than traditional on-premises infrastructure.
  
  Cloud data centers are no different. Although the data is physically contained within servers at a specific location, users can access and retrieve data remotely through internet connections.
  
  The largest cloud data centers are known as hyperscale data centers. These are much larger than typical data centers and contain miles of connective equipment and vast amounts of expensive equipment.
• On-premises data centers host all infrastructure and data within the data center. This setup allows for greater control and enhanced security, but it does come with limitations on scalability.
• Colocation data centers rent out space to store equipment and hardware, providing support and security without managing the data itself. This is a good solution for smaller organizations that have data center requirements beyond on-premises capabilities but do not have the means to own a large data center.

How are data centers used?

With so much data continuously being generated, businesses across every industry and around the globe have nearly infinite use cases for data centers. Because data centers process and store data, these tasks can take many forms. So, data centers can be used to house data deemed valuable by individual organizations.

For healthcare organizations, one use case might be hosting patient medical records in a secure database. Many healthcare organizations oversee the medical care of millions of people. And years’ worth of medical records for each patient makes up a vast amount of data. Medical records require extreme security to ensure patient privacy and legal compliance, and data centers can offer this security.

For social media sites and applications, data centers commonly process and store data about users and their online behaviors. This abundance of data can make algorithms powerfully accurate, as user data helps create individualized, catered lists. The more users interact with sites and apps, the more accurate the content served to them by algorithms.

Emerging technologies like generative AI take a lot of data resources. The data created by users interacting with generative AI models is typically used to retrain the models and make them more efficient. Data centers for AI are especially powerful and necessary since they enable this continued training and enhance the accuracy of generative AI models.