For the purposes of storing, processing, and disseminating data and applications, a data center is built to facilitate an organization’s IT operations. Its role in an organization’s daily operation is inevitably critical – they serve to maintain the continuity and enhance the performance of the overall operations of an organization. As a result, security, reliability, and stability of the data center are the most crucial factors to any organization.Back in the day, if you searched “data center hong kong” most of the results would surround mainly on-premises physical data servers as there wasn’t any cloud service at the time. The environment for data center infrastructure was not as friendly as it is now and had many restrictions due to geographical and technological issues. However, thanks to the public cloud service, the old model has changed completely to become way more convenient and less costly. Ever since the introduction of cloud service, the old, on-premise physical servers have advanced to a visualized framework that utilizes multi-cloud services to support applications and workloads. Thus, the application workloads have shifted from multiple data centers to also public and hybrid clouds. Position of a Data Center in a BusinessAs an essential component of a company, its means to provide services and assistance to business applications are impeccable. For instance:Large data storage, management, backup and recoverySupport productivity tools like email and Google DocsArtificial intelligence and machine learningVirtual desktops, communication toolsCustomer relationship managementAlso, the scope of its service is expanding over time along with technological development. Up to today, millions of data centers have been set up around the world. Almost every business has its own data center.Types of Data CentersBasically they can be identified as on-premise or off-premise data centers. On-premise centers are a group of privately owned and controlled servers, typically by the company instead of third parties. Those groups of servers are usually presented physically in business buildings. On the other hand, off-premise data centers appear virtually and do not need to have physical infrastructure. Off-premise services are typically provided by third-party and users gain access via the internet instead. Cloud data centersAdhering to its name, a cloud data center centers around online cloud services. Because of its nature, it is an off-premise type of data center which is based on cloud assets. In most scenarios, the host server is managed by a third-party service provider. One characteristic of a cloud data center is it enables customers to browse through resources via the internet. Enterprise data centersCustomly built by the company, they serve to satisfy the internal computing demands of the company. This is one of the traditional and common data centers built,owned, and run by the company itself.Colocation data centersColocation data centers run on a rental basis. Businesses seek to rent space within an off-premises physical facility that hosts the center. In a word, businesses lease a space from a third-party provider to offer a cloud-based service. However, Unlike cloud, except for the space, the servers and network infrastructures are owned and operated by the individuals.Managed services data centersDeployed, managed, and operated by third-party service providers, businesses seek to lease a model and access data center features and functions via a managed serviced platform. Data Center Tiers Classification Apart from types, there is also a tier list or 1 to 4 to identify the scale of a data center. The scale is ranked ascendingly to the number, which means, the higher the number is, the more established the data center will be. Capacity and redundancy are the metrics used to define the tier.Tier i : Only limited protection is offered as for Tier i data centers. For Tier i data centers, only a single-capacity component and a non-redundant distribution path.Tier ii: Improved protection against physical events. It is better than tier i as there is a redundant-capacity component more than tier i. Tier iii: Able to protect against all physical events. Possess redundant-capacity components and multiple independent distribution paths. Able to ensure no disruption to service while replacing components. Tier iv: The highest level of a completely fault-tolerant data center with multiple redundant-capacity components and independent distribution paths. It is best looking for services provided by a tier iii+ data center as tier iii / iii+ data centers offer the most cost-effective solution for the vast majority of businesses in any scale.
