Latin America. With bandwidth needs driven by trends such as 5G, big data, and the Internet of Things (IoT), the data center has had to evolve. Today we see a shift in the way organizations view, create, plan, and design their data centers.
Therefore, although there are organizations that have begun to migrate their data centers to rented locations or in the public cloud, when organizations decide to build their own data center, the facilities must be more efficient and achieve greater density.
"Without a doubt, the Data Center is the lifeblood of any company's network operations driving data to and from users, storage devices and the global network," said James Donovan, VP of the CommScope Infrastructure Academy. "Although there are many issues and trends surrounding Data Centers, such as the management of their network or density and migration strategies; when considering the design of these there are still some questions that remain unanswered."
The demand for bandwidth in data centers is increasing. Users had never needed, or expected, more of them: more speed, lower latency, greater connectivity anywhere, anytime. However, while at first the questions for designing a data center may seem basic, they are just as important for its proper functioning from day one.
"Questions as simple as where should I locate my data center? how big should it be? What technologies should I use? What energy consumption is expected? They seem very obvious, however, they are complicated when each of them entails more questions to make an efficient data center, "added James Donovan.
However, changes within the data center environment are so frequent and rapid that administrators are often forced to redesign or adapt their data centers. Which raises other types of questions that both operators and administrators must ask and answer before starting the redesign:
- Should I still use the same solutions?
- What higher density options are available?
- What is the network architecture that best suits my new needs?
- What network capacity and speed do I need? How can I plan to migrate to new technology in the future?
- What new rules should I know and how do I migrate to them?
Without considering these questions, managers will find themselves reacting to events and technological advances as soon as they occur, rather than implementing a strategy that keeps the data center ready for years to come. To meet current and future challenges, data center infrastructure must be flexible and easy to manage; this can only be achieved if its design answers the questions that will facilitate knowing the needs of each data center.
"The infrastructure design of a data center is completely different from the traditional structured cabling design for buildings and university campuses, for example. Even an experienced designer will need to familiarize themselves with specific norms and new standards, innovations in architectures and technologies for data centers. Integrating the various technologies, combining the different types of cabling, and above all, making sure the entire system works reliably creates a set of complex tasks that can be performed more easily if the questions of each stage of data center development are answered," concluded James Donovan, VP of the CommScope Infrastructure Academy.
