Monthly Archives: January 2014

How Colocation Data Centers use Modern Technology

In a typical situation, the colocation will provide the physical security, power, building, and cooling while the consumer provides the servers, and the storage. The space in a colocation facility is rented or leased by the room, cage, cabinet or rack. Several colocation facilities have also included in their services the ability for the business to purchase managed services for their servers and computer hardware.

Why Choose Colocation?

There are several explanations on why a business decides to use a colocation facility over constructing their own data center. The main reason is because of the cost that accompanies constructing a building, preserving and modernizing a huge computing facility. Historically, colocations were used by private businesses in order to minimize disaster recovery. In today’s world colocations are used more and more by cloud service providers.
So, the numerous advantages presented by the colocation facility are :
• Supplies the power
• Supplies the cooling systems
• Supplies the network connectivity and bandwidth
• Typically supplies managed services which gives 24 hour access to server administrators
• Typically supplies security protection such as firewalls and anti-virus protection
• Provides security for the physical access to the servers and other computing hardware

Making Use of Modern Technology

Cloud Resiliency

Colocation data centers need to prepare themselves for the challenges associated with the cloud. The cloud is far from perfect and has had many occasions of outages. Because of this colocation data centers are making use of:
• Creating and maintaining redundancy not only at the hardware level, but the software level, as well
• Ensuring that distributed data centers are logically connected
• Making sure that WAN operation and circulation is easier to regulate and manage
• Creating and maintaining data center load balancing and mirroring
• Utilizing innovative kinds of disaster recovery services designed specifically for the cloud

Colocation Data Center Operating System

Rack Colocation Servers
While colocation facilities are slightly different then the facility which does not provide colocation services, the statement that it is no longer only about managing a data center, it is also about the advanced data center infrastructure management or otherwise known as DCIM, and it is about the data center operating system. Data centers have been and continue to become the distributed entity in a business. When working with DCIM there are many key factors to consider which include:
•Not always the least expensive solutions
•Must include energy efficiency, asset visibility and capacity planning
•Proper planning and utilization of spacing and resources

Proficient Storage and Systems

While typically colocation consumers will provide for their own storage and systems, many facilities offer managed colocation services and as such must look at and deploy platforms and systems which are unified in order to provide increased efficiency, and thus reduce over-all costs. Using computing solutions which are high density they are able to offer more power within a smaller chassis.Going from the smaller chassis, server administrators are then able to put more consumers and higher workloads on a reduced amount of servers.Utilizing SSD and flash controllers’ server administrators have been able to cut the operating costs of storage. Using flash storage not only saves on costs but also aids in saving energy and space. This technology is still somewhat limited in deployment. The arrays are still a little pricey, and there has been some concern over using this technology for the long haul. Still SSD and flash are incredible technologies which are being utilized.

Go Green – Save Green

The idea of going to green technologies has often been thought to be expensive, however,as technology advances this thought process is changing. Data centers are beginning to see that if they go green they will actually save some green.

Some solutions which data centers including colocation data centers are using are:
• Low power servers – These servers typically use only 10 percent of the power and 10 percent of the space.
• Using low carbon, grid independent technology with onsite clean power generation
• Reducing capex by anywhere from 15% to 30% and slashing PUE by using chiller free data centers
• Helping to reduce power consumption and waste by using power proportional computing
• Supporting the creation of low energy yet powerful integrated devices by using Memristors.

As we move forward, it will become increasing important for colocation data center administrators to incessantly advance in the use of modern technology in order to stay in front of their competition.