The size of a data center and its design is of utmost importance when aiming for operational excellence and reliability. Data centers like DataSite generate huge magnitudes of data every second and it is prudent to enhance IT architecture to get optimal performance and increase value. Therefore, overprovision or under subscription can result in irregular utilization of available loads within a data center and the consequences can be detrimental to any organization.
Millions of dollars are spent in designing a data center and acquiring all the necessary IT infrastructure to keep it up and running. When it comes to the size of data centers, it all boils down to the organization’s data needs and plans to expand.
However, it’s detrimental when IT infrastructure is not aligned with the size and capacity of the center to enhance efficiency and reliability even under peak load times. The size of the data center is crucial because of the following reasons:
Importance of the Size of Data Center
Ability to Choose Appropriate Data Center Architecture
When an organization understands the technical details around their data center’s structural design, power supply and its load capacity, they’ll be well informed to purchase the right size of IT architecture which will provide performance excellence. The size of the center allows an organization to establish the bare minimum and maximum IT requirements.
Failure to fully assess and understand the size of the data center can lead to the IT infrastructure not being able to sustain the load, leading to loss and inconvenience within the organization and to their users.
Adequate Power Supply
Understanding the size of a data center informs power plans. This will enable the center to optimally perform with less or no hiccups. The danger lies in not fully grasping the size and energy demands of the data center, since this results in oversupply or undersupply of power.
Provision of excess power is not only costly to the organization involved but also negatively impacts the center’s integrity and reliability. However, undersupply on the other hand leads to unreliability issues and the inability to support important systems and processes should a prolonged power outage occur.
Acquisition of generators, cooling systems, power subsystems among other IT components should be based on the size of the center, allowing reliable performance round the clock.
Road to Efficiency and Reliability
The goal of any data center is to uphold efficiency and reliability, even during peak load times. The only way to achieve efficiency and sustainability for data centers lies in its design and construction. The purchase of the right IT architecture and allocation of adequate power energy is a clear path to achieve operational excellence.
When issues arise within the network, it will be easy for the organization to trace the root cause of the problem rather than just throwing in a hardware solution to fix the problem.
Approaching data centers with a right-sizing strategy is the most effective method when reliability and sustainability are among the key priorities of an organization keen on reaping the benefits of their data centers.
Data Center Size and Its Influence on Security
Data centers are classified into four tiers, with the lowest tier having a downtime of 28 hours and tier 4 providing a high-reliability rate and a lower downtime of 0.4 hours annually.
Evaluating an organization’s data sets determines the type of tier which will be appropriate and more befitting to the organization’s data needs. Each tier comes with different security benefits and reliability.
Security and data protection are crucial in any data center and any compromises to this will result in costly consequences.
Advanced businesses with high-end data needs are more likely to go with Tier 3 and Tier 4 because of the security and reliability associated with the two tiers.
Therefore, while size matters when it comes to reliability, it also guides the organization in establishing the right security protocols for their data centers if built in-house. For colocation centers, they strive to enhance security excellence across different tiers.
Crucial for Scalability
An organization’s data needs cannot stay stagnant but it consistently grows as the company expands into different business ventures. When an organization has fully grasped the concept of right-sizing based on the size of their data center, this leads them on a road map to establishing a custom data strategy that will be beneficial when scaling.
Understanding the importance of data center size will help organizations sustainably utilize their resources to achieve operational excellence. They will be able to leverage their data centers’ efficiency to help run their daily business operations.
This understanding is key when scaling up because of the increased need for huge data sets (arising from an increased customer base).
Conclusion
There is immense value in understanding the structural design of the data center and its size. This does not only provide you with the upper hand when purchasing IT architecture or establishing the amount of power needed to keep the data center effectively running. It also positions you well to properly utilize available resources in your data center to achieve operational excellence.
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