Physical Infrastructure

Hello, in this post we are going to talk about the physical infrastructure that you need to deploy to make your data center a functional place, this is a very extended topic, so we cannot talk about everything, but we will share several tips which will make your building more professional, and to be better prepared for the course of events. The topics that we discuss are not related between them except for their main purpose:

• It’s important at the time of deciding where your DC it’s going to be, to choose the place which less expenses it’s going to produce. Two important factors must be considered, the first and more important one is that the place should be cold and with a dry atmosphere, this is because it will save you money on air conditioning and will prevent your systems of deterioration caused because of the humidity; this is the first point to consider.

There is also importance to give on the emplacement where you shall locate your DC, it’s a good idea to look for several energy providers in case of that one of them suffers a failure of service. In order to easily access to different energy providers, you should choose a place near a metropolis, this also give you the advantage of making easier to find well trained employees.

• The system to order the network cabling that we would use in our infrastructure it’s a false ceiling with half pipes in the inside, so we could pass the links over there and it wouldn’t make a big mess around the room. Also, this is the cheapest system.
• It’ important to have a good sprinkler system, about this we would suggest a system based on Gaseous agents– These types of systems provide immediate fire suppression with relatively short system and business process recovery times. Gaseous agents deny a data center fire access to two of the three elements necessary for combustion: heat and oxygen:

1. Agents such as HFC-227ea, FM-200, and HFC 125 remove heat from fire. This is what water does, but these agents won't destroy your equipment.
2. Carbon dioxide and Inergen remove oxygen from the environment.

• Also, in order to protect your assets, you need to employ logical controls, such as:

1. Gates
2. Control points
3. Protocol-aware firewalls
4. Malicious code detection and response (anti-malware)
5. Intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDS/IPS)
6. Log monitoring
7. SIEM and correlation tools
8. Data leakage prevention (DLP)
9. Classification systems
10. Network segmentation
11. Compartmentalization of virtualized environments
12. Multi-factor authentication
13. Strong and complex passwords,
14. Global cyber threat information and real-time intelligence
15. Strong encryption (AES256, etc.)
16. Hashing for integrity