What are the different data centers deployed for cloud computing?

Data Centers in Cloud Computing

What are the Different Data Centers Deployed for Cloud Computing?

Emergence of cloud computing technologies and the subsequent proliferation of cloud adoption due to availability of different cloud service models and delivery paradigms have resulted in development of modern data centers. These facilities have been designed to address the significantly data driven workloads and zero tolerance policy for quality, latency, and performance.

Cloud data centers cater to highly specific infrastructure needs for efficiently serving cloud consumers' needs. Naturally, data centers are considered as key attribute of cloud computing with special focus on flawless networks, content, and service just to name a few.

Data center infrastructure for cloud hosting services is rapidly evolving to face the challenges of power requirements of enterprise hardware and micro colocation needs of various enterprises.

Thanks to the proliferation of High Definition video content, Internet of Things, and massive data generation, it is projected that the internet traffic will be growing at the rate of 30 to 40 percent year on year. The bandwidth-intensive content consumption will result in need to establish data centers in Tier 2 cities in order to move content closer to end users. Growth of specialty data center will also be driven by need to manage backups, emails hosting, security, Database as a Service, CDN, and disaster recovery among others.

Cloud services will also boost emergence of Software Defined Data Centers that will have significant concentration of virtualized aspects. It is exclusively built for the cloud and is exclusively geared toward servicing modern applications. Software defined data centers are built for catering to modern enterprise that are planning for cloud adoption without incurring costs of major physical overhaul. These facilities will enable enterprises to benefit from outsourced IT features including Software as a Service or cloud-based services of Infrastructure as a Service.

In order to perform serious cloud computing, there is need to have massive data centers. These data centers are empowered by redundant internet connectivity, massive bank of batteries, and equally powerful cooling systems. These data centers are built to house thousands of servers.

There can be no two opinions about cloud's involvement in driving evolution of data center design. It is also resulting in significant impact on the consolidation of industry.

In view of this, Software Defined Data Centers are capable of addressing enterprise's cloud needs. These data centers are able to separate application layer from the layer of physical infrastructure to facilitate broad assortment of finicalities such as computing, managing, deployment, storage services, and many more business associated applications in cloud environment.

Is Colocation in Cloud Computing Achievable?

Colocation means the positioning of a server in the data center to engage resources for IT deployments. Technically, cloud and colocation are two different terms and an amalgamation of the two is unachievable, given the technology and service prevailing today. The difference between the two lies in the way data is stored. Cloud is a virtualization technology, whereas colocation makes use of physical dedicated severs.

Data placed in the cloud can be distributed anywhere in a pool of servers and correspond to no fixed address. Colocation, on the other hand, is a physical storage technology in a rented data center space.Since the two technologies are virtually opposite, server colocation in cloud computing is bogus and does not sound technically correct.

Types of data centers in cloud computing

Depending on the level of service they offer, data centers can be classified into 4 tiers. These tiers or levels differ in terms of uptime guarantee, cooling capacity, redundancy, and several other aspects.

Tier 1 Data Centers: These facilities constitute the lowest tier in this classification. They are allowed the highest level of downtime of any level. These data centers do not guarantee redundancy with its power and cooling. They are required to offer at least 99.671 % uptime annually. Tier-1 data center facilities are ideal for a small business that can tolerate a considerable amount of downtime.

Tier 2 Data Centers: These are required to offer a minimum of 99.741% uptime every year. While tier 2 service providers maintain redundancy, they do not do so in all areas of operations. Only two aspects of its infrastructure receive priority-power and cooling distribution. As redundancy is only partial, no part of their system is fault tolerant.

Tier 3 Data Centers: These are N+1 redundant meaning there are dual sources of power and cooling. Tier 3 centers are required to maintain a minimum of 99.982 % uptime per year. They can have up to 1.6 hours of downtime annually; the downtime can be utilized for routine maintenance and resolving emergency issues.

Tier 4 Data Centers: These data facilities are completely fault tolerant as they have redundancies for every process. Their infrastructure is 2N+1 redundant. They need to maintain 99.995% uptime per year which means they cannot have more than 26.3 minutes of downtime annually. This downtime is used for optimizing the operations of the facility and doesn�t affect the operations of the end-user.

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