Member Article

Understanding Data Centres

As the owner of a data centre, one of the questions I am often asked is “what is a data centre, and why do I need one?” To those without a technical background, computing and technology can often be an extremely complex, often incomprehensible world, so today I thought I’d take time to go right back to basics when it comes to understanding data centres, and how they can help businesses to save both time and money on their IT expenditure.

Data centres are particularly useful for businesses which share information with a remote workforce, clients, partners or suppliers as all information is stored within the data centre rather than at the client’s premises. This can mean that no matter where an individual is working they will be able to access information quickly and easily.

What is a Data Centre? A data centre is a home for your servers and data storage. Historically most businesses used servers which were housed in their offices to run services such as email, storing company data and in some cases even for hosting the company website.

As the use of computers has grown the ability of a company to house and maintain more and more servers in their own offices becomes increasingly difficult, not to mention expensive.

This is due to the increased requirement for: - Power - Cooling - Security - Internet bandwidth.

A data centre is a building and organisation with the ability to provide these four key services reliably and consistently 24/7, 365 days a year. It’s perhaps worth remembering these services are usually delivered to a much higher standard and provided at a significantly lower cost than keeping them in-house.

Power Maintaining power to computer servers is vital, as when the power is removed unexpectedly all sorts of problems can occur. Rather than simply plugging a server into the mains, servers should always be protected against power surges and electrical failure. Data centres ensure clean power is supplied. Should a power cut occur battery powered uninterruptable power supplies are available until standby generators come online, which means your servers will not be affected.

Security Servers held within a data centre are stored in a secure area which can only be accessed by data centre staff and the equipment owners. In some cases, typically for smaller hosting requirements, escorted access will be offered to a shared rack. Most data centres offer 24-hour access, allowing maintenance to be undertaken outside of peak usage times.

You can expect to find key fob access, often a second authentication factor is also required such as a PIN.

Cooling Like any other electrical device, a computer creates heat when it operates. The bigger and faster the computer, the more heat it will generate. When the temperature rises and without adequate cooling systems in place, this can impact on the operation of the server. High temperatures will cause servers to shut down unexpectedly. Inside a data centre, temperatures are controlled, meaning that whether there are arctic conditions outside or Britain is caught in the midst of a heatwave, the performance of your server remains constant.

Internet Datacentres are usually equipped with multiple high-speed internet connections. Speeds are usually at least 1 GBit and can be multiple 10GBit connections. However that’s not the only difference to the most common Fibre Broadband connections which are fast to download but slow to upload.

A data centre’s internet connection will be equal for traffic coming in and leaving the data centre which is much better for hosting services as they require fast upload speeds.

The other difference is that a data centre’s connection will be uncontended, meaning that high speeds can be consistently achieved. Compare this with a home internet connection, for example and you’ll notice that the connection will slow down at peak times when more people access the service.

How can data centres benefit businesses? - Designed for Resilience - Supported by experienced, knowledgeable and skilled staff - Multiple internet connections and other economies of scale. - Additional services (e.g. backup, maintenance and ongoing support)

Data centres are used to perform a wide range of IT and computing tasks such as storing files, backing up office-based systems, as well as hosting email accounts and websites. It’s worth remembering that as data is held remotely this can provide additional benefits such as business continuity and can even enable staff to access files when working remotely.

For most businesses there are two main advantages of using a data centre. IT Services will perform better from a Data Centre when you do not have the resources on site.

Secondly they can be used in tandem with an existing internal IT infrastructure to provide a backup service. Even if your offices are damaged by fire, flood or theft, your business will be able to continue trading with comparatively minimal disruption.

How do I choose a data centre that’s right for my business? When thinking of using a data centre there are two very important factors to consider: The levels of support you can expect to receive from the datacentre and the level of access to your equipment. Always take time to visit the data centre and meet the individuals who will be responsible for managing your services.

Most datacentres offer a range of hosting packages which are suitable for all sized businesses or individuals including cloud based, dedicated and co-location servers.

All our services are maintained by experienced members of staff and we offer our customers a full range of services from fully managed IT to single server colocation.

Want to know more? You can find more information about our data centre and available servers on our website at www.hahosting.com. Alternatively, you can call us on 0114 228 0022 or email sales@hahosting.com.

Rory Delahoyde is the Managing Director of HA Hosting, home of the Sheffield Data Centre

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by HA Hosting .