What Are Data Centers and How Do They Work?

What Are Data Centers and How Do They Work?

IT experts explain what are data centers and what their importance is in modern life.

There are plenty of people out there that have never heard of data centers and have no idea about the kind of work that is done there. Simply put, a data center is a physical facility where multiple organizations from all over the world store their important business information and critical business-related applications.

Modern Data Centers

  • Data centers in 2021 are very different from the data centers of 20 or even 10 years ago. The infrastructure of a data center has shifted away from the traditional physical servers that were operated and maintained on-site and has now reached a point where virtual networks are being used to support and maintain important organizational applications. The storage of important data evolved from physical servers to a multi-cloud environment.

Nowadays, data exists and is spread through multiple data centers in the form of the edge as well as the public and private clouds. Data centers of today are required to communicate data through these sites that are present both on-site and on the cloud.

Importance of Data Centers in Business Management

  • In today’s IT landscape, data centers are created to manage business applications and perform important activities, including;
  • File Sharing and email management
  • Collaboration services, communications, and virtual desktop management
  • Machine learning, big data, and artificial intelligence.
  • Database management and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP).
  • Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
  • Productivity Application Management.

Core Components of a Modern Data Center

  • Data centers of today are equipped with application delivery controllers, servers, storage systems, firewalls, switches, and routers. All of these components are put into place to store and manage critical business data and applications. Data security is one of the key purposes of a data center. With the help of these components, a modern data center has the ability to provide;

Storage Infrastructure

  • Data is the lifeblood of any organization. Data centers are used to house and maintain this data efficiently and consistently.

Network Infrastructure

  • The network infrastructure is used to connect servers, storage, and data center services. This also provides a platform to maintain external connectivity to various end-user locations.

Computing Resources 

  • Data applications are the backbone of a data center, and they ensure that they will keep running smoothly. These components provide the important network connectivity, local storage, memory, and the processing power necessary to drive important data management applications.

Operational Processes of a Data Center

  • Data centers are created to protect and maintain the performance and integrity of the core data-related components, and they are responsible for making sure that everything is properly maintained and managed so that no important data gets lost or misplaced. In addition to this, they are also responsible for;

Network Security Appliances

  • These appliances include firewalls that are used to protect and safeguard the data centers in the event of a breach or a hacker attack. Data is properly backed up and protected so that nothing gets lost in an attack.

Application Delivery Assurance

  • To maintain the high-level performance of application software, these mechanisms are put in place to provide important application resilience and make it readily available through the use of load balancing and automatic failover protocols.

Types of Data Centers

  • Most of the data centers are using the same type of service models that are readily available to ensure maximum performance and security. The distinction is made between them based on whether they are owned by single or multiple organizations as well as their data center topologies, technologies that are being used for data storage, and their energy efficiency.

With that being said, here are various types of data centers;

Enterprise Data Centers

  • These data centers are owned, built, and operated by companies for the specific purpose of end-user optimization. These data centers are normally housed on corporate campuses.

Managed Services Data Centers

  • These data centers are taken care of and managed by a third party on behalf of the company it was originally created for. The company leases the equipment and technology being used instead of outright purchasing it.

Colocation Data Centers

  • In this type of data center, the company rents an area in a pre-existing data center that is owned by a different organization. This data center houses different infrastructure amenities like building, security, bandwidth, and cooling while the company renting the space provides and manages the components like servers, storage systems, and firewalls.

what are data centersCloud Data Centers

  • This is an off-location data center that is maintained and managed on a cloud, and all the applications and data are managed on the cloud services that are normally provided by a public cloud provider.

In the article above, we have discussed the modern data center in great detail. We also took a deep dive into the important components of a data center that ensure that it will run smoothly and properly. Finally, we discussed the different types of data centers and their scope and role in performing.

Data centers are the way forward when it comes to organizational data security and management. Because of their widespread benefits and future implications, more and more data centers are being created daily. A lot of big companies like Pkaza are hiring employees from all over the world that have expertise in various fields and niches to work in these data centers. These jobs not only offer financial security but are also high paying when compared with other related jobs in the market today.

So, you can contact us today at Pkaza if you have any questions regarding the working of data centers or if you are looking to work in one yourself.