Cloud computing continues to transform the global data centre markets even as higher customer expectations and stricter regulations on storage/access of data make third party data centres more expensive. A data centre helps manage high volumes of data and traffic with low latency. Such an infrastructure is helpful particularly for
- ERP & CRM applications to improve business productivity
- Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence by processing big data
- eCommerce transactions
- online gaming platforms and communities
- Data storage, back up, recovery and management
However, privacy concerns have seen the rise of smaller Edge or Micro data centres, which can be owned by small or medium sized enterprises, to maximise uptime and efficiency. According to a global digital survey, the primary reasons for moving data from a public cloud to a private cloud (on-premises or co-location) environment are:
- Costs
- Regulatory compliance
- Performance issues
- Perceived concerns over data breach
- Actual data breach &
- Lack of visibility and control
What is a Data Centre?
A data centre is an array of equipment that houses physical servers, hard drives, cabling, networking & communications solutions, backup power systems, cooling & climate controls, including security protection, to safely store, optimise and process large amounts of data.
There are many choices of data centres to fit the needs of organisations:
- Enterprise: Owned by the organisation itself, to process internal data on mission-critical applications supporting its business
- Cloud: Virtual data centres using the third-party services offered by the likes AWS & Google Cloud
- Colocation: Equipment, space and bandwidth are rented from a third-party owner, instead of a virtual service
- Edge: A smaller data centre closer to the premises of the end-user thereby reducing latency & lag. With IoT devices requiring low-latency demands Edge computing facilities are becoming popular for smaller & medium sized businesses
- Micro: A larger version of the Edge Data centre, which would be the size of a small room, that can handle data processed for a specific region
As computing demands, and technology, evolve enterprise data centres are transforming into a hybrid-infrastructure. Mission-critical applications, with maximum uptime and privacy, are housed on traditional data centres. Public cloud storages are utilised for tier-2 applications (or non-mission-critical). Based on expected uptimes, reliability and robustness of infrastructure, data centres can be classified as:
- Tier 1: With an expected uptime of 99.671% (projected to have 28.8 hours of annual downtime) these centres have a single path for power and cooling. Typically these offer little, or no, back up and redundancy
- Tier 2: Expected uptime of 99.741% (22 hours of annual downtime). These centres have a single path for power, cooling, back up and redundant components
- Tier 3: Have multiple paths of power and cooling. Systems to update and maintain without taking the systems offline. Expected uptime of 99.982% or 1.6 hours of annual downtime
- Tier 4: Built to be completely fault-tolerant, with redundancy for every component, the expected uptime is 99.995% these centres are projected to have only 26.3 minutes of downtime annually
How can VoxTBV help?
Keeping your data safe is of paramount importance, you will no doubt agree! The three factors that are critical when a data centre is designed to keep your data safe are:
- Data Security: Protection against physical intrusion, cyber breaches, human and environmental issues
- Service Continuation: Disruptions could arise due to improper architecture of power, networking systems & redundancy
- Personnel & Asset Safety: Weight & power distribution, cable management and alarm systems at optimal safety thresholds are critical to a safe environment
From recommending the optimal hardware (computing, display, backup, redundancy, protection), networking solutions, power and cooling to asset monitoring and infrastructure management, VoxTBV engineers will be able to help tailor your organisation’s requirements
Who are we?
VoxTBV is one of the pioneers in India to have been involved in communications infrastructure. We have built communications systems across India upon which telecommunications services are operated today. From physical infrastructure (towers, antennae, switches, buildings, external power backup) to cyber infrastructure (routing & switching software, operational support systems and user applications) we have worked on the transmission, channel and receiver elements of communication, since the turn of the century when India leapfrogged several countries in its road to development.
Our DCS Architects have access to all the major OEMs like Dell, HP, Lenovo, Aruba, HPE, Ruckus, APW President, Synology, Commscope, Cisco, Juniper, and many more in addition to our inhouse teams for supply and installation of network cabling and accessories. Visit here to know more about our DCS solutions.