What is a Data Centre?

Jan. 29, 2010 - PRLog -- Data centres are central to this continuity - like the veins in your body pumping blood around your arteries, so a data centre provides life support to the IT infrastructure keeping a business alive.

IT systems are a crucial part of any modern organization’s success - if an IT system goes down, at least one portion of the business is likely to grind to a halt. In the worst case scenario, the whole business may be offline and unable to trade until the issue is resolved. Likewise if the integrity of a company’s data is breached, there may be catastrophic implications for financial well being. A business dealing with thousands of clients must protect its client confidentiality and keep details such as bank account data secure. Failure to do so will have not just legal implications but will likely results in customers taking their business elsewhere.

Responsible for the integrity and functionality of IT equipment, a data centre houses computer equipment in a secure environment with backup power sources, security devices and environmental safeguards. Often called server farms, a data centre can be thought of terms of a bank vault - the money crucial to the continued operational activity of the bank and its customers is held securely in a vault to protect it from theft or damage that may impede the daily business of the bank. A data centre performs the same function, protecting the servers and associated components within to ensure the continued availability of necessary IT systems used in day-to-day business activities.

Born during the dot com bubble, data centres have since developed into a specialist discipline with industry accepted tiers and operational requirements. Data centres are classified by tier , from one to four with one being the most basic and four the most stringent. An understanding of these tiers is important when deciding which data centre to use to house the servers keeping the IT systems up and running 24/7. The data centre tier is a tool to enable non-technical managers with a universal means of measuring the anticipated performance of a data centre facility and comparing it with other similar facilities of different ratings.

The term data centre can refer to a single room, an entire floor or a whole building. Data centres that are large or used for sensitive data will invariably have stringent security measures in place such as video cameras, fingerprint recognition pads, security guards, perimeter alarms or bollards outside of the building.

The Tier topology of a site is based on the weakest subsystem within the facility. So a Tier 3 UPS configuration using a Tier 2 chilled water system leads to an overall Tier 2 site classification. For an explanation of the tiering system please refer to our article Data Centres Tiers Explained.