Data Centers can be very useful tools when it comes any disaster recovery planning. Within a data center, a firm houses its most expensive IT equipment in a secure, reliable building designed to withstand extreme conditions. A trained staff is also present to make sure that the equipment is up and running at all times without any issues.
The IT infrastructure is very important equipment to most of today’s businesses. Data that is accumulated over the years of the existence of the firm is stored within on this equipment inside data centers. Servers are used to constantly update any new information that comes in. Therefore, if a disaster happens, it is almost impossible for the company to bounce back via disaster recovery options without the use of a data center.
However, data centers themselves are prone to many issues. Although data centers are positioned within locations that are on the lowest scale of the risk of natural disaster exposure, things can still get pretty tricky from time to time.
Other than natural disasters, there are also numerous technological mishaps that can have an impact upon the efficiency of any data center facility.
One of the most common issues that can occur from time to time is that of server application crash. Even if one of these applications crashes, the effects can be pretty catastrophic. For this purpose, every data center is home to a number of trained IT specialists that can deal with both software and hardware issues.
On the other hand, network connectivity is one of the most important aspects of any data center. That is why data centers are connected to a private DSL line with large amounts of bandwidth. In fact, the best data center facilities make sure that their network infrastructure is redundant. 2-3 connections are put in place so that even if one of them stops working for a bit, the rest can distribute the load amongst them. The point of any redundant infrastructure is to allow the entire system to maintain functionality at all times.
Similar to the issue of server application crashes, outside intrusions within a private network setup at a data center can also lead to catastrophic results. This is precisely why network security is taken very serious. Firewalls are put in place to prevent hackers from getting in. Moreover, data encryption such as 128-bit and 256-bit are used to make sure that data integrity is maintained under all circumstances.
A data center is critical to any company’s IT setup. Even small sized companies are now looking towards private data centers or colocation as opposed to maintaining an IT infrastructure within their main headquarters because the cost of data center is more acceptable.