What Is Data Center Architecture?
Data center architecture is the design and physical layout of a data center. It details how to construct, configure, and manage all a data center’s computing components, such as servers, storage devices, networking equipment, and the facility’s capabilities, such as power supply, cooling, and security. There is a wide range of approaches to data center architecture that deliver varying degrees of performance, security, sustainability, and compliance.
Why Is a Solid Data Architecture Needed?
The architecture of a data center is crucial for ensuring reliability, scalability, security, and efficiency in storing, managing, and processing an organization’s data, applications, and systems. Pairing efficient placement and connections of technology components with reliable power sources and cooling mechanisms is vital for hosting enormous swaths of mission-critical data and systems.
Data center architecture provides the underlying infrastructure and environment that fuels an organization’s IT function and enables continuous business operations. Quality data center architecture can deliver high-performance computing to empower an organization’s modern workloads and systems.
Benefits of Data Centers with Quality Architecture
A good data center architecture can provide tremendous value to organizations, including:
Lower Costs
Lower operating costs with optimized resource utilization, reduced energy consumption, and efficient maintenance.
High Availability
Ensure data is available and systems are online with built-in redundancy measures.
Scalability
Scale resources up or down efficiently to meet fluctuating demands with modular data center design.
Why Would an Organization Choose to Buy Versus Build a Data Center?
Buying services from a data center with quality architecture is the ideal choice for organizations that need:
- The ability to expand without building new facilities
- Highly available and resilient data, workloads, and systems
- Fewer demands on IT resources
- Compliance with industry- or country-specific requirements for data storage and location
- Robust physical and digital security
- Lower total cost of ownership (TCO)
- An energy-efficient footprint to help meet sustainability goals
How to Evaluate Data Center Architecture
Buying services from a data center with quality architecture is the ideal choice for organizations that need:
- Physical Space: How are the servers and racks laid out? What type of cables are used to connect the server racks, and what is the cable support infrastructure?
- Networking: How is the data center network configured? What type of switches and routers do they use? How is the “Meet-Me Room” connected?
- Power: How much power will your chosen servers consume, and what are the associated costs?
- Cooling: How does the data center counteract the heat from the servers? What are the costs associated with the cooling method(s)?
- Security: Who has physical access to the data center? How is the data center protected from disasters? How is the network protected from cyber threats?
- Sustainability: Does it use a renewable power source or cooling method? What’s its carbon footprint, and does that align with sustainability goals? What environmental standards does the building meet?
- Connectivity: What internet service providers (ISPs) and network carriers does the data center use? Are there direct connections to public cloud providers? Are there interconnects to other data centers?
- Compliance: Does the data center meet compliance standards and have current certifications? How often is the data center audited for compliance?
- Maintenance and Management: How is the data center monitored and managed? Do they use software? What is the maintenance and upgrade schedule? Will that lead to service interruptions?
- Redundancy: What redundancy setup does the data center deploy for its key components (e.g., power, cooling, etc.)? What level of fault tolerance are we comfortable with?
Evocative Delivers Quality Data Center Architecture
Evocative’s 24 data centers and 32 points of presence are carefully designed, engineered, and optimized for space, performance, security, power, computing, network connectivity, cooling, compliance, and more. With fully redundant architecture, renewable energy options, and carrier-neutral connectivity, Evocative operates reliable, sustainable, and cost-effective data centers.
And with colocation, bare metal, and managed services offerings, Evocative can deliver the ideal data center architecture to ensure your data and systems are highly available, reliable, and resilient.
