What is a data center and why you might need one?

Colossal IT industries such as Google, Microsoft, or Meta (Facebook) have trillions of gigabytes worth of data to be worked upon. Loss of this pivotal information or an anomaly of data can’t be endured. Therefore they built their personal data centers to keep their data intact and encrypted.

Data Center is an infrastructure that companies use to store, manipulate and regulate their data for confidentiality and security.

A data center is outfitted using IT infrastructure, electrical equipment, mechanical instruments, and environmental facilities. It is guarded with physical security such as fencing/ iris scanning, fire detection, and suppression. It also uses software called DCIM ( Data Center Infrastructure Management) which provides unified administrative facilities.

Now let’s understand the types of data centers.

Types of Data Centers

Data centers are differentiated according to the infrastructure and requirements. If you’re looking for a data center, analyze what you expect based on type.

Enterprise Data Centers

The first and foremost type is the traditional enterprise data center. It provides private facilities built, owned, and operated by a company for personal use. Most of the data of IT companies is stored on their purchased devices. These data centers can be on-premises or in nearby locations for maintenance purposes.

Managed Service Data Centers

Managed data centers are third-party facility providers who rent out storage infrastructure, networking facilities, and maintenance of their equipment. Top MSPs ( Managed Service Providers) are IBM, Accenture, HCL, Infosys, Wipro, etc. which support services for IT companies to expand their businesses.

Colocation Data Centers

Colocation also known as ‘Colo’ is the data center colocation where only White Space ( Hardware related to storage or network) is rented out by individual companies for their specific requirements. Their hardware has a separate location in the building from other data racks. It is quite cheaper than MSPs as only hardware is rented and not the whole infrastructure. Thus it is trending for small IT industries nowadays.

Cloud Data Centers

An external or Off-premises data center where users can purchase services and storage facilities through a virtual infrastructure. The crucial difference between an MSP and a cloud provider is that a cloud data center only offers services on a subscription basis. Companies rent Cloud services so they don’t have to pay for any hardware. Popular cloud service providers such as AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Cloud, IBM, and Salesforce offer the virtual infrastructure.

Edge Data Centers

Edge data centers are devices (highly configured PCs) placed on the premises. They sit close to the applications of the user and can deliver services and content with minimal latency. The reason for keeping the servers closer is that they are used as backups in case of main server failure.

Considering the various categories of data centers and their facilities, people might get confused about which one is the best fit for them. 515 Engine plays a key role in clearing up their perplexity. Thus let’s pay attention to why IT companies are looking for a data center.

Why do you need a data center?

Abundant infrastructure to manage data.
Adequate space for storage purposes.
Sufficient dedicated employees.
Unravels data security issues.
Serves networking facilities.
High scalability of data.
Maximum coherence in communication.
Resistance to power failure.

Hence companies reach out to third-party services such as AWS or Azure for rental data center facilities.

Instead of wasting hours online looking for a data center, ColoAdvisor makes this process 10x faster by using our handpicked list of all the data centers in the USA. Just fill up your specifications about cabinets, power requirements, desired location, and bandwidth needed, and in a fraction of a second, receive multiple quotes which are apt only for your requirements.

Get rid of the headache of drafting emails to the service providers, that might not even be acknowledged by simply quick scanning your quotes. That’s how your procedure gets really cinch. Still, if you feel any queries related to data centers or Coloadvisor you can always reach out to us at https://www.515engine.com/contact/