How important are data centers in our lives?

A few years ago, I made myself this question and got an blunt answer: our life, in most cities, depends on the proper functioning and availability of one or more data centers. It is no exaggeration. They control almost everything in every segment of human activity: energy, lighting, telecommunications, internet, transport, urban traffic, banks, security systems, public health, entertainment and even our physical integrity.

In short, the welfare and safety of billions of humans are delivered to these centers of control and supervision of data and information. Most people might not worry too much about it. But large corporations and public institutions, on the other hand, have an obligation to take this matter seriously.

A blackout of these centers would prevent us from doing a simple query to Google, since this giant portal stores more than 700 trillion pages of information on thousands of data centers around the world. Many people prefer not to think about the problem, because, they say, can do nothing to change the situation.

What is this thing?

Do a quick search and find a clear definition: Data center is a centralized location resourced with computing and crucial telecommunications – including servers, storage systems, databases, peripherals, access networks, and software applications – operated by trained personnel to use and control industries (government and service companies).

To better understand the trends in these centers, interviewed experts from Gartner Group. Teased them away, accusing the data center to be one of the greatest villains of the environment, for its absurdity energy consumption, by investments that demand brutal and skyrocketing operating costs.

That may be true for 15 or 20 years. Since then, things have changed, says Gartner Experts. Modern data centers are much smaller and modular. That is the big corporate trend: the modular growth. Of course they are still having a long life cycle, but its expansion occurs in a modular fashion. Just as corporations seek this modularity from desktop to mainframe, so too does the data center.

Data centers that I visited recently shown that they consume much less energy and take up much less space.

Grow as the demand for services grows. Sustainability and its impact on the environment is a real concern, with much more positive results for the companies themselves, within the philosophy of “green data center technology”.

Evolution

To Gartner experts, data centers have modern processing capacity that is four times higher than those of the past, while taking up only 40% of the space of the old. And strictly speaking, simple miniaturization of components, but in a constant search for the overall system efficiency, which includes the concepts of virtualization (use of virtual machines) and cloud services.

Modern data centers store more data and information on the racks than before, because it was more difficult to cool them. New technologies that enable not only to increase in density but also assure better cooling. As a result, modern data centers occupy less space. There are also other ways to increase the overall efficiency of the system, such as multizone, with specialized areas at high, medium and low-level processing.

Reducing risks

Another major trend in data centers is the relentless pursuit of higher levels of security, especially those serving the areas of essential services and financial sectors. Big banks need to ensure absolute continuity of services and reduce the risk of interruption or blackouts almost to zero. The same with the telecommunication, especially after the advent of the internet.