A data center is a physical facility that enterprises use to house their business-critical applications and information. As they evolve, it’s important to think long-term about how to maintain their reliability and security.
What is a data center?
Data centers are often referred to as a singular thing, but in actuality they are composed of a number of technical elements. These can be broken down into three categories:
- Compute: The memory and processing power to run the applications, generally provided by high-end servers
- Storage: Important enterprise data is generally housed in a data center, on media ranging from tape to solid-state drives, with multiple backups
- Networking: Interconnections between data center components and to the outside world, including routers, switches, application-delivery controllers, and more
These are the components that IT needs to store and manage the most critical systems that are vital to the continuous operations of a company. Because of this, the reliability, efficiency, security and constant evolution of data centers are typically a top priority. Both software and hardware security measures are a must.
