To remain competitive in today’s market, business’s IT support must be reliable, flexible and cost-effective. Optimizing a data center can significantly impact the business’s bottom line, including data security and IT related expenses.
What are Data Centers?
Hardware and software are the components of data centers. They store and manage business IT infrastructure as well as data storage systems.
A reliable power source is essential for a data centre to function smoothly. It also requires additional servers and backups.
Which Types of Data Centers are There?
There are 4 main types of data centres, each one with their own strengths and limitations.
1. On-Premise Data Centers
Data centers on-premise are situated in separate rooms, and can be found within the same premises as the company. They are fully customizable and allow businesses full control. The downside is that these systems can be costly due to the aging infrastructure. Businesses will need to employ in-house engineers to support and maintain their operations.
2. Colocation Data Centers
Colocation data centers allow companies to rent part of an established facility, and then pay either monthly or annual fees. It is the vendor’s responsibility to secure a physical place and adequate conditions for the servers, while the company installs, manages and maintains their own hardware. This reduces CAPEX and gives you full control of the configuration and management. But, it might not prove to be economically viable in the long-term.
3. Virtualized Data Centers
The virtualized data center offers a cross-over option by hosting some assets locally while others are hosted on the cloud. This allows you to reduce hardware and energy costs and improve data mobility. It also offers rapid increase in capacity when required. Additional costs for software licensing and installation are the downsides.
4. Cloud Data Centers
The cloud data center provides both software and hardware for companies. They are growing in popularity because of their low cost and rapid scaling, as well as the high reliability and security. They are much cheaper than traditional IT, allow rapid growth (or decrease in) of capacity and do not require the hiring of in-house specialists to run the data center.
What is it important to optimize a data center?
The process of optimizing data centers is ongoing. You want to preserve security and reliability, improve performance, and scale the data center without raising costs.
Some factors are non-negotiable — such as uninterrupted power supply, controlled environmental conditions and high security; but others such as infrastructure, staffing and facilities can be tweaked to accommodate the changes in business goals and circumstances.
How to optimize a data center
Based on your business priorities and the existing setup, there are many options for optimizing data centers.
By virtualizing data centers, you can increase efficiency and create vast networks across multiple states. Another way to improve efficiency is through cloud models. Cloud service providers are increasingly competitive, which means there is more choice and better pricing.
Running costs can be significantly reduced by optimizing energy usage. To ensure stability, data centers must be controlled by the environment. It’s now possible to remotely house data centres with better bandwidth. This allows businesses to select locations that have moderate weather, low electricity prices or use alternative energy sources like solar and geothermal.
Data center management is a key component of cost-saving and efficiency. Different management platforms place the most critical elements of a data centre under one roof, giving you clear insights into how resources are being allocated and potential improvements.
Take a proactive approach to optimizing data center architecture
It is possible to increase the efficiency of a data centre while still keeping an eye on your expenses. Optimized data centers will increase business productivity without putting too much strain on your budget. By implementing some of the optimization options, businesses can significantly improve their data center’s efficiency and performance.
Entrepreneurship Life published the article How to Optimize your Data Center.