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.
Table of Contents
What Are Data Centers?
Data centers consist of hardware and software that store business IT infrastructure and data storage systems.
For a data center to run smoothly it requires an uninterrupted power supply, additional servers for backups, a high-speed network, controlled humidity and temperature, regular maintenance and much more.
What Types of Data Centers Are There?
There are four main types of data centers, each with its own strengths and weaknesses.
1. On-Premise Data Centers
On-premise data centers are located on the same grounds as the business itself, in a dedicated room. These systems are customizable and offer full control to the business. On the downside, costs are high due to aging infrastructure and businesses have to hire in-house engineers for support and maintenance.
2. Colocation Data Centers
With colocation data centers, companies rent a part of an existing data center facility and pay monthly or yearly 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 option reduces CAPEX costs and allows for hardware customization and full control over configuration and management. However, in the long-term is might not be cost effective. You can learn more about colocation data centers here.
3. Virtualized Data Centers
Virtualized data centers offer a cross-over solution by hosting some of the assets locally and others on the cloud. This reduces hardware expenses and energy consumption, improves data mobility and offers quick capacity increase when needed. The downsides are additional costs of implementation and software licensing.
4. Cloud Data Centers
Cloud data centers provider both hardware and software for businesses. Their popularity is growing rapidly, mostly because they offer a pay-per-use cost structure and quick scalability, along with excellent reliability and security. IT costs are significantly reduced, they allow for rapid increase (or decrease) in capacity, and there is no need to hire in-house experts to manage the data center.
Why Is It Important to Optimize a Data Center?
Optimizing a data center is an ongoing process. The goal is to maintain security and reliability while improving performance and scalability, without increasing the 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 Best Optimize a Data Center
Data centers can be optimized in several ways, depending on business priorities and the current setup.
For example, data center efficiency can be increased through virtualization and creating vast network environments across data centers located in different states. Cloud models are another way to increase efficiency without increasing cost. The rising competition in the cloud service market means more available options, better pricing and improved offers.
Optimizing power usage can significantly reduce running costs. Controlling environmental conditions is necessary for a data center to remain stable and with improved bandwidth, it is now possible to house data centers remotely. This allows companies to choose locations with moderate climate, cheaper electricity or alternative power sources such as geothermal.
To improve efficiency and costing, we should also take a closer look at data center management overall. There are different management platforms that place all critical components of a data center under one environment, allowing clear insight into resource allocation and possible improvements.
Taking a Proactive Approach to Optimize Data Center Architecture
There are many ways to improve a data center while keeping a firm grip on expenses. An optimized data center will provide a reliable platform that increases business performance without creating a huge burden on the budget. By implementing some of the optimization options, businesses can significantly improve their data center’s efficiency and performance.
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