Salient Features & Consideration while design & building of Modern Data Center

A Data Centre is a repository that houses computing facilities like servers, routers, switches, and firewalls, as well as supporting components like backup equipment, fire suppression facilities and air conditioning. A data Centre may be complex (dedicated building) or simple (an area or room that houses only a few servers). Additionally, a data Centre may be private or shared.

Modern data Centres are vastly changing in Infrastructure and has shifted from traditional on-premises physical servers to virtual networks that support applications and workloads across pools of physical infrastructure and into a multicloud environment.

Nowadays, data exists and is connected across multiple data Centres, the edge, and public and private clouds. The data Centre must be able to communicate across these multiple sites, both on-premises and in the cloud. Even the public cloud is a collection of data Centres. When applications are hosted in the cloud, they are using data Centre resources from the cloud provider.

Importance of Data Centres to business:

In the world of enterprise IT, data Centres are designed to support business applications and activities that include:

• Email and file sharing
• Productivity applications
• Customer relationship management (CRM)
• Enterprise resource planning (ERP) and databases
• Big data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning
• Virtual desktops, communications, and collaboration services

 Core components of a data Centre:

Data Centre design includes routers, switches, firewalls, storage systems, servers, and application delivery controllers. Because these components store and manage business-critical data and applications, data Centre security is critical in data Centre design. They provide the following:

Network infrastructure: This connects servers (physical and virtualized), data Centre services, storage, and external connectivity to end-user locations.

Storage infrastructure: Data is the fuel of the modern data Centre. Storage systems are used to hold this valuable commodity.

Computing resources: Applications are the engines of a data Centre. These servers provide the processing, memory, local storage, and network connectivity that drive applications.

 Data Centres operation:

Data Centre services are typically deployed to protect the performance and integrity of the core data Centre components.

Network security appliances: These include firewall and intrusion protection to safeguard the data Centre.

Application delivery assurance: To maintain application performance, these mechanisms provide application resiliency and availability via automatic failover and load balancing.

 Facilities in Data Centre:

Data Centre components require significant infrastructure to support the Centre's hardware and software. These include power subsystems, uninterruptible power supplies (UPS), ventilation, cooling systems, fire suppression, backup generators, and connections to external networks.

Standard Infrastructures in Data Centre:

The most widely adopted standard for data Centre design and data Centre infrastructure is ANSI/TIA-942. It includes standards for ANSI/TIA-942-ready certification, which ensures compliance with one of four categories of Data Centre tiers rated for levels of redundancy and fault tolerance.

Tier 1: Basic site infrastructure:  A Tier 1 data Centre offers limited protection against physical events. It has single-capacity components and a single, nonredundant distribution path. 

Tier 2: Redundant-capacity component site infrastructure: This data Centre offers improved protection against physical events. It has redundant-capacity components and a single, nonredundant distribution path. 

Tier 3: Concurrently maintainable site infrastructure: This data Centre protects against virtually all physical events, providing redundant-capacity components and multiple independent distribution paths. Each component can be removed or replaced without disrupting services to end users. 

Tier 4: Fault-tolerant site infrastructure:  This data Centre provides the highest levels of fault tolerance and redundancy. Redundant-capacity components and multiple independent distribution paths enable concurrent maintainability and one fault anywhere in the installation without causing downtime.

 Data Centre components often make up the core of an organization's information system. Thus, these critical data Centre facilities usually require a significant investment of supporting systems, including air conditioning/climate control systems, fire suppression/smoke detection, secure entry and identification and raised floors for easy cabling and water damage prevention.

When data Centres are shared, virtual data Centre access often makes more sense than granting total physical access to various organizations and personnel. Shared data Centres are usually owned and maintained by one organization that leases Centre partitions (virtual or physical) to other client organizations. Often, client/leasing organizations are small companies without the financial and technical resources required for dedicated data Centre maintenance. The leasing option allows smaller organizations to obtain professional data Centre advantages without heavy capital expenditure.

Data centre construction primarily focuses on designing and building a data Centre using these key criteria:

• Demand Load & Capacity: The floorplan of the data Centre must have enough room to house all servers and equipment for current and perceived future use.
• Disaster Tolerant: The data Centre facility must be able to resist natural disasters and calamities such as earthquakes, floods, snowstorms, tornados/cyclone, etc. Moreover, the data Centre construction also looks for ways to prevent disasters, such as adequate water tanks and hoses within the facility for putting out a fire.
• Efficient Design: The overall design should be straightforward and require minimal wiring. With the shift towards green data Centres, efficient air flow, renewable energy resources and other environmental factors are also taken into consideration.

Client/server architecture: It is a computing model in which multiple components work in strictly defined roles to communicate. The server hosts, delivers and manages most of the resources and services to be consumed by the client. This type of shared resources architecture has one or more client computers connected to a central server over a network or internet connection. Client/server architecture is also known as a networking computing model or client/server network because all the requests and services are delivered over a network. It’s considered a form of distributed computing system because the components are doing their work independently of one another. There is an alternative called peer-to-peer or P2P modelling which has emerged, which many feels is in some ways superior to traditional client/server models, especially in terms of handing handling specific challenges where communications are more evolved.

Security architecture: It is a unified security design that addresses the necessities and potential risks involved in a certain scenario or environment. It also specifies when and where to apply security controls. The design process is generally reproducible. In security architecture, the design principles are reported clearly, and in-depth security control specifications are generally documented in independent documents. System architecture can be considered a design that includes a structure and addresses the connection between the components of that structure.

Server Room: A server room is used to store, power, and operate computer servers and their associated components. This room is part of a data Centre, which typical houses several physical servers lined up together in different form factors, such as rack mounted, or in tower or blade enclosures. A data Centre might consist of several server rooms, each of which is used for separate applications and services. A server room provides the operational and environmental components and services to operate enterprise class servers. Generally, a server room might include 10 to several hundred servers. The servers housed in a server room usually include basic CPU components and lack any display or input device. They can all be centrally accessed and managed through a server administrator system, which is typically found outside the server room. Server rooms are primarily used for executing enterprise applications that require massive computing resources at run-time, such as banking software, search engines or social networking applications. A server room is designed to provide a continuous and redundant supply of electrical power, backup/alternate power, lighting, and air conditioning, and is monitored by one or more server administrators. Moreover, server rooms tend to include protections against earthquakes, fires, and other natural disasters, and should be designed to accommodate expansion

Cluster Server & Server farm -It is a group of computers that relate to each other and operate closely to act as a single computer. Speedy local area networks enhance a cluster of computers' abilities to operate at an exceptionally rapid pace.

Server farm is a set of many servers interconnected together and housed within the same physical facility. A server farm provides the combined computing power of many servers by simultaneously executing one or more applications or services. A server farm is generally a part of an enterprise data Centre or a component of supercomputer. A server farm is designed to provide a massive and redundant source of computing power for computing-intensive applications. Server farms generally consist of thousands of servers, but their size can vary in different organizations and based on underlying requirements. Each server within the server farm is networked to the others and to a central management server. The central server manages the overall operations of these servers such as assigning processes, resource balancing, scheduling, security, updates and more. Although server farms are primarily used for enterprise and scientific applications, they can also be used to provide various services, such as core computing services for the primary application data and application backup services, load balancing and more

Computer rack: It is a physical chassis that can house multiple computers or servers simultaneously. It is a mounting rack that can install more than one computer or device in various form factors. A computer rack is also known as a server rack or computer cabinet. A computer rack is associated with rack-mounted servers that are horizontal form factor server sets. It is available in various sizes. A computer rack provides each rack unit with structural support assembly, neat cable arrangement and power/cooling support. depending on design. A computer rack also may house blade servers, tower mounted server systems, switches, routers and other devices that comply with the rack's mounting space.

Server cage: It is a specific kind of container for physical server hardware. Like the traditional cage, server cages have open systems composed of metal bars or similar structures, where light and air can move through the enclosure, but where the cage provides effective security for what's inside. With larger data Centres or other server operations, businesses can put server cage security in place for several reasons. For an in-house server system, business leaders may want extra security for high traffic areas. Another popular use of server cage is when a single data Centre handles server operation for multiple clients. Here, it can be very useful to put each client’s separate server hardware in a different cage to prevent unauthorized crossover. For instance, technicians serving a particular client structure can get a key to just one server cage, instead of being able to access the entire hardware setup in the server room (this can protect the worker, as well as the company, in a case where server emergency requires a careful look at access) - server cages can also help to provide better documentation for who is accessing server systems for maintenance, repairer or other purposes.

Data Centre infrastructure management (DCIM): This refers to the processes, guidelines, tools, and methodologies used for the provisioning, governance and overall management of data Centre assets and infrastructures. It provides a comprehensive approach to operating and maintaining an enterprise class data Centre and encompasses IT resources like hardware, software, networks, and facilities, including power, cooling, lighting, and overall physical infrastructure. DCIM provides a suite of different services and dynamics for modern data Centres. Typically, DCIM is considered an amalgamation of IT and facilities management.

DCIM addresses factors, such as:

• Data Centre energy management (power, cooling, carbon footprint)
• Resource provisioning
• Capacity planning
• Availability of critical IT systems and resources
• Integration of virtualization and cloud computing technologies
• Risk management
• Asset management
• Automation

DCIM-Centred tools and applications are geared toward the centralized management of entire data Centre resources, such as hardware, software, and power, etc., regardless of vendor/manufacturer.

DCIM-based tools are also designed for data Centre managers. This requires more simplified insight into how the complexities of a data Centre relate to its overall operations and business.