If your business operations primarily rely on data, you’ll likely need to invest in a data center at some point. However, running one isn’t straightforward. To help you get started, here’s your guide to business data centers.
Table of Contents
1. Prioritize Security
Data is valuable. Whether you’re a business owner with an onsite data center or running one for other businesses, you must prioritize security. Forbes reports that over 4 billion records are thought to have been exposed due to data breaches in only the first half of 2019.
While there’s no denying cybersecurity is crucial, failing to consider the physical risks facing your data center would be a huge mistake. The networking equipment, storage, and server in your data centers are some of your business’s most valuable resources, but only if they stay online. Physical security plays a key role in ensuring the safety of the information systems and technologies that facilitate the online presence of your business. You must create a comprehensive security strategy that combines the strengths of physical security and cybersecurity.
A great place to start is to set up several layers of security between your equipment and anyone who could want to harm your business. It’s a really straightforward idea, but putting it into practice can be tricky. To help you get started, here’s an idea. You can have five layers of physical security checks: From the front door to the security lobby, a security desk for physical check-in verification, a mantrap, a door to the collocation floor, and finally, a gate leading to the actual cages or cabinets.
2. Focus On Energy Efficiency
Data centers consume a staggering amount of energy to keep things operational. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, data centers are among the structures with the highest energy consumption rates. They use 10 to 50 times more energy per square foot than an average office building.
With energy costs being through the roof, this can translate to high energy bills that’ll leave a significant dent in your cash flow. That’s why you should focus on implementing energy savings measures for your business data center. A great place to start is by leveraging virtualization.
Virtualization will allow you to consolidate storage and servers on a shared platform while retaining the preferred segregation between data, operating systems, and applications. You can run most programs on virtual machines with shared hardware. This significantly decreases the quantity of servers and storage devices, bringing down power consumption.
Virtualization and hardware consolidation are two excellent approaches for data centers to decrease the need for additional space, power, and cooling resources. You can automatically lower all associated expenses by minimizing the number of physical assets. Implementing software-based smart design and airflow management systems may also help.
3. Protection Against Fire
With technology worth millions of dollars in one structure, you want to take every possible precaution to prevent fires from scorching up your business data center. This means putting stringent guidelines and severe repercussions for anyone who disregards them in place.
Investing in firewalls is also a good idea, and no, it’s not the sophisticated firewall box that sits in the racks and safeguards the data center from hackers. It’s a literal wall for fires. The extraordinarily thick, specially constructed walls physically divide the various facility rooms (one room alone may house 10,000 servers). In case of a fire in one of the rooms, these walls will keep the equipment in the other rooms safe for a certain guaranteed number of hours, even though the walls are exposed to unimaginable pressure from the heat of a raging fire. How cool is that?
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that about 20% of new enterprises fail in their first two years of operation, 45% fail in their first five years, and 65% fail in their first decade. The solutions you implement for your business needs will largely determine your success. If you handle large volumes of data vital to your operations, having an onsite data center offers plenty of inconveniences. Use this guide as you move forward.
