DATA CENTER DESIGN


From my understanding the above diagram suggests all of the working operation layers of a data center. These layers are what a typical data center should be built upon. The following are the operational and design layers of a data center as shown in the diagram above:
• Monitoring and Management
                      On-site NOC’s
                      Off-site NOC’s
• Operations, Maintenance and Training
• Architecture and Support infrastructure
                            o Power protection and distribution
                                        Back Up Generators or Inverters/solar power
                                        Surge protectors/Stabilizers/UPS’s
                            o Air Cooling and Conditioning
                                        Maintaining air cooling around and beneath racks and enclosure
                                        Raising of data center to ensure that air passes below the center
                                        Understanding on a periodically basis the amount of heat generated by servers and appliances to determine the amount of cooling
                                        Usage of metal floors to aid cooling of servers and racks
                            o Racks and Enclosures
                                        Determining the kind of enclosures and rack architecture that would maximize space of data center
                            o Fire Detection and suppression
                                        Use of sprinklers in case of fire out breaks         
                                        Use laser detection systems for timely fire/smoke detection
                                        Positioning/concentrating sprinklers in places where heat is being generated the most


                            o Physical Security
                                        Access control mechanisms
                                             • Bio-metrics
                                             • Entry cards/ smart cards
                                             • Cameras
                            o Communications
                                        IP PBX
                                        KVM ACCESS
                                        Remote Access
                            o Data Cabling
                            o Network and Security
                                        Switches
                                        Routers
                                        Bridges
                                        VPN Concentrators
                             o Applications, Databases and Content
                             o Servers and Storages
                                        Virtualization Technologies
                                        Tape and SCSI Storage Techniques
                                        Remote storages

The three most important core attributes of a data center are:
High Availability
Which says that at all times that the service of a data center must be ‘always on’- i.e. always available at all times-whether during planned maintenance or unplanned, whether during a catastrophic disaster or otherwise because of the role a data center plays it cannot be not available, which is why processes must be put in place to guard against all possible occurrences of non-availability. A data center achieves high-availability by implementing a fully redundant, fault-tolerant, and concurrently maintainable IT and support infrastructure architecture in which all possible hard failures are predictable and deterministic.

Flexibility
In as much as all possible forms of technology must be used to ensure availability of every data center layer, flexibility is an important aspect that cannot be neglected in any way. Why? Because of scalability and up gradation to adapt to new technologies that simplify the way data centers would work better with less complexities. It must also support fast and seamless deployment of services and hardware swaps without affecting the smooth running of services within the data center. One of the key elements I see is the using of a modular structure where it becomes more for flexible for a data center to deploy services than using a literary chained enterprise structure that would not really allow upgrades or new deployments without breaking the enterprise chains (which in turn results in downtown of some sort).

Simplicity
As with most things in IT, the over-sabi of IT solutions experts and architects to deploy complex systems most and often time’s results in a complex network that becomes hard to manage and maintain after they have designed, tested and deployed. It is of utmost importance for architects to use simplistic infrastructure but yet of functional and technical heights to design and implement a data center. Documentation is also a key area and the use of off the shelf systems wouldn’t be a bad idea. That’s why, I love a modular design of integrating different kind of simple technologies into a data center design which are then chained together (like Rengi’s Zanpactou-Bleach) which can be broken without affecting the services. It’s just like the motivation of me writing about the design of a data center- most of all the write-ups I came across were too complex and advanced for me but God has been merciful.
Of course, there’s more technical/administrative nitty gritty that goes along with designing a data center but I believe this helps an average person to understand more of what goes down in designing a data center.


WHEN I GET TO UNDERSTAND MORE I’LL SHARE WITH ALL.-READING THE PHILOSOPHIES BEHIND A DATA CENTER-can you imagine, it dates back to Rome


REF:
• PTS DATA CENTER SOLUTIONS
       FRANKLIN LAKES NEW JERSEY
• Sun Blue Prints TM book ,“Enterprise Data Center Design and Methodology”, by Rob Snevely (ISBN 0-13-047393-6)
• Novell- ‘Virtualization in the data center’