Data Center Infrastructure

Data center infrastructure is the hardware resources that are used to store and manage a large amount of data. It includes computers, storage systems, networking hardware, power backups, and also the systems to regulate the environment such as air conditioners and fire suppression.

Nowadays the big organization does not store data in one system instead it maintains more than one data center which distributes the load of data processing and even helps in case of disaster.

Further in this content, we will be discussing core elements of the data centers their key requirement. We will also discuss how to manage this storage infrastructure and the information within this storage infrastructure.

Data Center Infrastructure

1. Core Elements
2. Key Requirements
3. Storage Infrastructure Management
4. Challenges in Managing Info

Elements of Data Center Infrastructure

The essential elements that are required for the proper functioning of the data center are as follow:

1. Application: Application is a program that is used to retrieve meaningful information from the database. It uses operating system services to read and write data to the database.
2. Database: Database (DBMS) organizes the data in the proper format of rows and columns which helps applications to easily retrieve data from the database. DBMS optimizes data storage.
3. Server and Operating System: As application provides the logic for computing data from database and database store the data in an organized way. Still, we require a system that would provide service to applications and databases to function smoothly.
4. Network: Network provides connections between the distributed data center.
5. Storage Array: It is the storage device that we used to store data

Key Requirements of Elements of Data Center

In the section above, we have studied the core elements of any data center. But for the uninterrupted operation of every data center is important for the success of any business. For the reliable data center infrastructure each element of the data center must fulfill the following factors:

• Availability: All data center elements must be accessible else their unavailability can have a negative impact on the business.
• Security: To protect the data from unauthorized access data center must have policies and procedures. Several security measures must be taken such that the client must access only their allocated resources on the storage array.
• Scalability: As the business grows the data center must be able to show additional processing capabilities and it must also allow extending the storage array as growing businesses deploy more servers, applications, and additional databases. Thus, the data center infrastructure must grow with the business.
• Performance: The data center elements must be able to process the requests at a high speed. And each element of the data center must provide optimal performance.
• Data Integrity: The data integrity mechanism ensure the correctness of data as variation in data may affect the operations of the organization.
• Capacity: With the growing data of the company the storage capacity of the data center must be extendible without affecting the current data and also in a cost-effective manner.
• Manageability: All the operations of the data center must be performed efficiently and the manageability can be achieved through automation.

Storage Infrastructure Management:

Managing the infrastructure of a complex data center is quite difficult and requires several tasks. Below we have discussed few important tasks that must be performed to manage the storage infrastructure.

1. Monitoring: There must be continuous monitoring of the information collected in the data center. There are several aspects of the data center that can be monitored such as the security of data in the data center, the performance of the data center, data accessibility, and the capacity of the data center.
2. Reporting: Whatever is monitored of storage infrastructure must be reported. As the reporting helps us to improve the features of data structure.
3. Provisioning: To run a data center company keep aside an amount in the company’s account from providing hardware, software, and other resources required to run a data center. The provisioning can be classified into two types:
   1. Capacity Planning: The capacity of any data center is planned in such as way that the data center can fulfill the user’s and application’s needs even in the future.
   2. Resource Planning: Resource planning involves mapping adequate resources such as personnel and technology required to run the data center.

Key Challenges in Managing Information

To design effective information management policies businesses must consider the following factors.

• Exploding Digital Universe: The rate at which information is growing has increased exponentially. But why it has increased? Most of the data has been duplicated to ensure its availability which has also concluded an explosion of data.
• Increasing Dependency on Information: Now a day most businesses are getting dependent on information as strategic use of information is bringing success to the business.
• Changing Value of Information: The importance of the information doesn’t remain the same with the increasing time. The information that is important today may not even remain useful in the coming years.

To design an effective information management policy one must also understand the value of information in the data center over its life cycle. We will discuss the information lifecycle in our next content.

In this way, you can design and manage an effective data center infrastructure that fulfills the need of users.