A data center is a building facility used to house computer systems and related components, such as telecommunications systems and data storage. Since IT operations are so crucial, these facilities usually contain backup power supplies, redundant data communications connections, environmental controls (e.g. air conditioning, ventilation, fire prevention), and various data security devices. Large data center facilities operate on an industrial scale using as much electricity as a small city.
Based on their function, data center facilities are divided into 2 general categories, namely:
- Internet Data Center: only to support applications related to the Internet, usually built and operated by service providers or companies that have a business model based on Internet commerce..
- Corporate/Enterprise Data Center: supports all functions that enable various business models to run on Internet services, intranets, and both.
Ideal Data Center Design
Criteria for designing a data center facility in general include:
- Availability
Data centers were created to be able to provide continuous and continuous operations for a company both under normal circumstances and in the event of significant damage or not. The data center must be made as close to zero-failure as possible for all its components. - Scalability and Flexibility
The data center must be able to adapt to rapidly growing needs or when there are new services that must be provided by the data center without making significant changes to the data center as a whole. - Security
Data centers store various valuable company assets, therefore the security system is made as tight as possible, both physical and non-physical security.
| ASPECT | INFORMATION |
|---|---|
| LOCATION |
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| SUPPORTING FACILITIES |
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| COMMUNICATION |
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Main Services in the Data Center
Infrastructure that Guarantees Business Continuity
Aspects that support business continuity when a critical condition occurs in the data center. These aspects include data center location selection criteria, data center space quantification, data center space layout and installation, required electrical systems, scalable network infrastructure settings, cooling system settings and fire suppression (fire prevention and extinguishing, such as detectors). smoke and fire extinguishing systems with special chemical fluids).
Data Center Security Infrastructure
Consists of physical and non-physical security systems in the data center. Physical security system features include user access to the data center in the form of an access key to enter the room (access card or biometrics) and all security officers who monitor the condition of the data center (both inside and outside), physical security can also be applied to a set of infrastructure by locking with a certain padlock. Non-physical security is carried out on parts of the software or system running on the device, including by installing several security software such as access control lists, firewalls, IDS and IDS hosts, security features at Layer 2 (datalink layer) and Layer 3 ( network layer) accompanied by security management.
Application Optimization
It will be related to layer 4 (transport layer) and layer 5 (session layer) to increase the response time of a server. Layer 4 is the lowest end-to-end layer between source and destination applications, providing end-to-end flow control, end-to-end error detection and correction, and may also provide additional congestion control. Meanwhile, layer 5 provides dialogue strategies (who has a turn to speak/send data), token management (who has access to shared resources) and data synchronization (last status before the link breaks). Various issues related to this are load balancing, caching, and SSL termination, which aims to optimize the running of an application in a system.
IP Infrastructure
IP infrastructure is the main service in the data center. This service is provided at layer 2 and layer 3. Issues that must be considered related to layer 2 are the relationship between the server farm and service devices, enabling media access, supporting reliable, loop-free, predictable and scalable centralization. Meanwhile at layer 3, a related issue is enabling fast-convergence routed networks (such as support for default gateways). Then additional services are also available called Intelligent Network Services, including features that enable network-wide application services, the most common features are QoS (Quality of Services), multicast (allows the ability to handle many users simultaneously), private LANS and policy-based routing.
Storage
Associated with all storage infrastructure. The issues raised include SAN architecture, fiber channel switching, replication, backup and data archiving.
Tiers in the Data Center
Data center design starts from existing needs, then defines the various IT equipment needed along with technology selection along with planning other data center infrastructure. There are 4 tiers in data center design, each tier offering a different level of availability tailored to the needs of a data center according to TIA 942 (Telecommunication Industry Association). Below is a table of specifications for each tier in the data center:
| PARAMETER | TIER I – BASIC | TIER II – REDUNDANT COMPONENTS | TIER III – CONCURRENTLY MAINTAINABLE | TIER IV – FAULT TOLERANT |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Availability level | 99.671% | 99.741% | 99.982% | 99.995% |
| Characteristics of disturbances (planned or not) | Vulnerable | Somewhat Vulnerable | Not vulnerable to planned disruptions (because there are already mitigation scenarios), but still vulnerable to unplanned disruptions | Not Vulnerable |
| State of power and cooling distribution | Single path with no redundancy | Single path with redundant component (N+1) | Multiple power and cooling distribution path but only one path is active, including redundant components (N+1) | Multiple active power and cooling distribution path including redundant components 2(N+1) |
| Availability of raised floor, UPS, generator | It may or may not exist | Must have raised floor, UPS and generator | Must have raised floor, UPS and generator | Must have raised floor, UPS and generator |
| Implementation time | 3 Months | 3-6 Months | 15-20 Months | 15-20 Months |
| Annual Downtime | 28.8 hours | 22.0 hours | 1.6 hours | 0.4 hours |
| How to carry out preventive maintenance | Must be completely shut down | Only for power paths and some other parts of the infrastructure that require a shutdown process | Has sufficient additional and distribution capacity to accommodate the load of the main system when the system is under maintenance | |
| Suitable data center scale to be built | Small | Medium | Large (enterprise scale) | Large (enterprise scale) |
The definition of N above refers to the number of components needed so that the entire data center can operate at full load. For example, if a data center at full load requires 5 AC units, then a tier-4 data center must have a total requirement of 2(5+1)=12 AC units, 7 of which are as backup. For tier-3, only 6 AC units are needed, only 1 as a backup.
Next Generation Data Center
Next generation data center will become a major issue in data centers in the next few years to meet the rapidly increasing needs of companies. The next generation data center will be service-oriented. The steps taken to move towards the Next generation data center include:
- Consolidation means centralization and standardization of all existing devices so as to produce an intelligent network.
- Virtualization, organizes resources to be more efficient and independent of physical infrastructure.
- Automation, dynamic provisioning and information management to achieve business resilience.
- Business Continuance
- Green Data Center, which aims to increase power usage efficiency, because data center power consumption is already very significant.
- IT infrastructure orchestration
The layers contained in the next generation data center are not much different from the aspects found in data centers in general, namely:
- Data Center Facilities include buildings that ensure business continuity in the event of a disaster, energy efficiency, air conditioning efficiency and cabling systems.
- Data Center Infrastructure includes the virtualization of various infrastructure, namely storage, servers, networks and network services.
- Data Center Applications and OS includes the integration of applications and OS into a virtualized infrastructure.
- Data Center Management includes provisioning, adaptability, troubleshooting, and visibility.
- Data Center Business Process includes unified data center operations, process and team changes, as well as operational readability, server, storage and network integration.
Source : https://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pusat_data
