Data Centers: A main breakdown

Welcome back!!!

Today we'll be doing a general breakdown about the most important blocks that form a data center.

In this post we won't go into specifics, in future posts we'll focus in each one of them, but today we'll only take a look on the main guidelines that we must consider when designing a DC.

-Physical block: The tangible part of our DC. First of all we must assume that we can’t place our DC anywhere.

A data center is a big infrastructure, so it needs a big amount of space. It consumes an enormous quantity of electricity, so we will want to place it where we can get cheap electricity costs. Also it needs to be in a controlled environment: the heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems (HVAC) are really important.

Also is important the environment and the geographical zone where it’s located: our priority is a natural disaster green zone (want to avoid earthquakes, hurricanes, floods…).

-Network connectivity: All the devices in our DC need to have high speed links (optic fiber, 10Gb Ethernet).

Also we want a network as robust as possible, the availability of the DC has to be of the 100%, 24-7, 365 days/year.
The main key to achieve that goal is redundancy. We need a backup of everything, and be prepared to the worst case scenario and still the DC to be up and running.

Finally we want to have in mind the possibility to grow up and expand, a scalable system is basic.

-Data storage: One of the most important blocks when designing a data center, here we have a lot of possibilities that we can use: using Flash storage, disk arrays, software-defined storage…
Here you have a very interesting link to Dell’s DC Storage Solutions.

-Security: One of the most important concerns of people: privacy and security of their data. And when we are considering a data center, this concern is critical.

We can mainly divide the security into two layers:

• Physical: The data center has to be on permanent surveillance. You don’t want any unauthorized access. Only the people with the properly clearance can access zone.
  Some measures are: controlled biometrical access, using surveillance  and security systems…

• Digital: Apart from the physical access, we want nobody to mess with our data. We want to use firewalls, encryption on our access channels, intrusion detection and prevention systems.

We could keep talking and discussing for hours about all this topics, but today we wanted to give you an introduction to all of the posts that we’ll be talking on the next weeks.

As always, stay tuned to the new posts to learn more, and have a nice week!!!