What's in a modern data center -- and where is it?

I'm speaking at Data Center World in Nashville next month, and have begun wondering about the modern data center. Traditionally, data centers have been full of mainframes, minicomputers and/or servers and large amounts of centralized storage. But with the advent of distributed computing and cloud computing, it can be argued that the entire enterprise is "the data center." So what's in today's data centers, how have they changed, and why?

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Michael Dortch

asked on Feb. 23, 2010

Tom Craig

Account Executive, tw telecom

Posted on Feb. 23, 2010

I have seen 2 types of data centers come up in the telecom world- colo and virtual. Colocation allows you to operate your own servers in a hardened environment with plenty of bandwidth available. Virtual is cloud based and basically gives you space on someone else's server. You pay for them to handle all management, you buy space on the server and a pipe to bring it in. Either way works, it just depends on if you want to handle your hardware yourself or have someone else do it.

chris burd

Posted on Feb. 24, 2010

That's a great question and I like Tom's answer as well. In my opinion there are the traditional Data SLAM's from the Tele Co days' Private bunkered colo facilities and the Cloud. As per companies, they are still the same filled with aging pieces of hardware that are begging to be virtualized as each mili second another forest get's killed. Google is doing some real interesting stuff with new power from one of those new Green Box power supplies. At the end of the day, even with virtualization they are still rooms filled with Loud Server's a few main frames left. Unlike TV They don't make weird beeping sounds unless you call a monitone beep from a failed disk cool. They are often well lit when you walk in, what is cool though is the biometric's that are going to the enterances.

So I guess to answer your question, the data center hasn't changed much, sure they are computing is getting smarter, sure computing is getting more energy efficient, but at the end of the day they are still just this: A room fool of steal that makes smart business decisions if programmed correctly, routers and switches that make intelligent decisions on where to go and how to get there, they still drink power like they are cool aid, and they still are noisy places that you could loose your hearing, they still require large HVAC Systems, and still require some sort of back up power. They may have gotten slightly smaller, but at colo/rent a data center locations and at corporate back office rooms they are still the same thing for the last 10 years or so. We have evolved zero in the data center space. There are still thousands of miles of cat 5 e, 5 and 6, there is still hundreds if not thousands of miles of fibre, and there is still the coax feeds. They still have relay racks and server cabinets and main frames still take up large chunks of power and space.

So I guess my friend maybe the question you are asking should be why haven't they changed much?

Timothy Loftus

Skilled Leader & Managing IT Infrastructure Architect, Free Knowledge Network, LLC

Posted on March 5, 2010

I agree with Mr Craig, though I would like to note that "Colo" was called "service agency" in the early 80s, "outsourcing" in the late 80s, "hosting" in the late 90s, and lately it has been called "the cloud". It’s all still about a hardened data center somewhere (on-premise or off) that is maintained by a service for a fee.

So even though some things have changed, to quote Mr. Burd; "the data center hasn't changed much". It is still a “center” where most critical “data” is kept and processed.

We may see some significant change as "Grid Computing" and networks mature in the next ten years.