DATA CENTERS

DATA CENTERS. The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 defined a data center as "any facility that primarily contains electronic equipment used to process, store, and transmit digital information." This includes "a free-standing structure" or "a facility within a larger structure, that uses environmental control equipment to maintain the proper conditions for the operation of electronic equipment." According to IBM, data centers date back to the 1940s; the U.S. military's Electrical Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) was an early example. (1)

Over the years, computers became more size-efficient, requiring less physical space. In the 1990s, microcomputers drastically reduced the amount of space needed for IT operations. Microcomputers that began filling old mainframe computer rooms became known as “servers.” The rooms became known as “data centers.”

The advent of cloud computing in the early 2000s significantly disrupted the traditional data center landscape. Cloud services allowed organizations to access computing resources on-demand, over the internet, with pay-per-use pricing—enabling the flexibility to scale up or down as needed. In 2006, Google launched the first hyperscale data center in The Dalles, Oregon. This facility by 2025 occupied 1.3 million square feet of space and employed a staff of approximately 200 data center operators.

A study from McKinsey & Company projects the industry to grow at 10% a year through 2030, with global spending on the construction of new facilities reaching 49 billion U.S. dollars. (2)

There are different types of data center facilities. A single company might use more than one type, depending on workloads and business needs.

This Enterprise Data Center hosts all IT infrastructure and data on-premises. This model provides have more control over information security and can more easily comply with regulations like the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). The company is responsible for all use, monitoring and management tasks.

Cloud data centers (also called cloud computing data centers) house IT infrastructure for shared use by multiple customers—from scores to millions—through an internet connection. Many of the largest cloud data centers—called hyperscale data centers—are run by major cloud service providers (CSPs), including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform, IBM Cloud and Microsoft Azure. These companies have major data centers in every region of the world. For example, IBM operates over 60 IBM Cloud Data Centers in various locations around the world.

Hyperscale data centers are larger than traditional data centers and can cover millions of square feet. They typically contain at least 5,000 servers and miles of connection equipment, and they can sometimes be as large as 60,000 square feet.

Cloud service providers typically maintain smaller, edge data centers (EDCs) located closer to cloud customers (and cloud customers’ customers). Edge data centers form the foundation for edge computing, a distributed computing framework that brings applications closer to end users. Edge data centers are ideal for real-time, data-intensive workloads like big data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and content delivery. They help minimize latency, the time it takes for data to travel from one point to another, improving the application performance and customer experience. (3_

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Source:

1. "Data Center," Wikipedia

2. "What is a Data Center?" IBM, Online: https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/data-centers

3. Ibid.