Data centers require a lot of power in order to keep servers running and server rooms from overheating. In an age in which users expect applications to be up and running 100 percent of the time, data centers need to remain operational around the clock. But what happens, for example, if a storm rolls through the area and the power goes out?
In the first installment of this series, we explored the technical components that are found in every data center. In this article, we will examine the important role a data center plays within an organization, while taking a closer look at who manages it and what their responsibilities entail.
No matter the industry you operate in, data center security is of the utmost importance. If you build your data center in an area where it’s susceptible to manmade or natural disasters, and you don’t have a business continuity strategy in place, your data center can get knocked offline, preventing users from accessing data and using your applications. On the other hand, if your data center security layer is thin, to the point where unauthorized individuals can access it easily, your sensitive data and vital trade secrets can be compromised.
With the sheer amount of computing infrastructure running, and the cooling requirements needed to keep that equipment in good condition, it comes as no surprise that data centers are energy hogs.
“There is no greater concentration of computing professionals in a single place interested in efficiency, scale, openness and impact, than the OCP summit,” stated Rob Coyle, PCX’s director of sales and marketing.
Coyle, who oversees the customer’s journey at PCX Corporation, while working to remove friction from the client’s problem-solving process, recently presented and hosted an industry discussion at the 2020 Open Compute Project (OCP) virtual summit. Coyle, who has extensive experience selling and working within both the commercial construction and data center markets, has become a veteran attendee and presenter at OCP conferences perennially. However, Coyle experienced a very different summit in 2020, due to the unprecedented impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The novel coronavirus, COVID-19, has created an economic whirlwind affecting multiple industries across the globe. With businesses and their employees taking necessary precautions to battle the spread, each state invoking differing orders of shelter-in-place, mandatory restrictions placed on travel, and non-essential businesses closed, the global economy has been put on pause. With the threat of a global recession on the horizon, experts are predicting negative growth for the United States markets in the first quarter of 2020, and an even more impactful decline in the second quarter. These forecasts are causing urgent, understandable concerns for the construction industry, including those within the data center sector.
Designing any type of data center is a collaborative process. It requires careful preplanning with input from the information technology (IT) team, engineers, architects, electricians, contractors and others. This collaboration ensures the final construction conforms to specifications and meets both current and future data processing needs. Even with input from so many stakeholders, the needs of the engineer responsible for managing the data center can be overlooked. However, with modular data centers, the compartmentalized design can simplify day-to-day operations and maintenance.
