Data Center Construction and Management: Data Center Development Trend

Data Center Construction and Management: Data Center Development Trend

1.2 data center Development Trend

1.2.1. Data Center Business Development History

Based on the data center infrastructure and different application requirements, the service features data processing, Disaster Backup, network services, development and testing, and user support. From the perspective of the evolution of data center functions, data centers have experienced three forms of development: computing centers, information centers, and service centers.

1. Computing Center, namely, data storage and simple computing stage, appeared in 1960s

Initially, a data center is usually called a computing center, where one or more servers are placed in a space called a data center. Its main function is data storage (or data storage) and simple computing, data storage media mainly include magnetic drums, tapes and disks. Its main features are: single function, only used for centralized storage and management of data or electronic documents.

In this phase, the "Data Center" lacks construction standards, uses voltage regulators for power supply, lacks power supply security measures, and uses air duct air supply without precision temperature and humidity control systems. IT devices generally use smaller than 16 computers or large or small computers with millions of computing power. It should be noted that in this phase, the equipment and facilities of "data centers" in some special fields have exceeded the "data storage and simple computing" phase. For example, nuclear weapon development and spacecraft development.

2. Information Center, that is, the data processing and business application phase, appeared in 1980s

At this stage, most data centers are called "Information Centers ". Its functions have been greatly extended, greatly improving data storage capabilities. Based on network communication technology and data development and utilization technology, MIS (Management Information System), CallCenter (Call Center) application Systems such as mrpⅱ (Manufacturing Resource Planning Management System), CRM (Customer Relationship Management System), and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning Management System) were popularized, the data center began to undertake core computing, data storage and backup, and business support functions to meet the needs of the organization's business development. The availability of data centers has been greatly improved. At this stage, the importance of data centers has gradually emerged. For some industries (such as the financial industry), data centers have become an essential business support platform.

In this phase, the "Data Center" has targeted standards and specifications; the power supply system is constantly improving, introducing and using UPS in large quantities; and starting to be equipped with a comprehensive monitoring system; data center cooling has gradually evolved from centralized cooling to a large number of dedicated air conditioners with constant temperature and humidity. Fresh air systems and data centers are used for positive pressure and dust control. The computing power of computers Reaches hundreds of billions of times, and the servers become the main devices of the data center. network devices enter the data center and are widely used. multiple servers are used online.

3. The service center, that is, the service data center stage, appeared at the beginning of the 21st century.

With the deepening of information construction, organizations are increasingly dependent on information systems and data integrity. Organizations have higher requirements on the availability and service of data centers. IT service management becomes a kind of standardized work, and IT technology can be used to achieve centralized automatic management. At the same time, IT performance has become part of IT service management, IT service quality has become the focus of attention. At this stage, the data center is not only a cost center, but also a service center for institutional informatization. In addition to core computing, data storage, and backup, the data center starts to undertake the core business operation support, information resource service, and business continuity management of the Organization.

1.2.2. Development Trend of new-generation data centers

There are several differences between the new generation data center and the traditional data center: first, the existing data center is basically built based on relatively low standards; second, in the past, organizations often regard the construction of data centers as a decoration project, while the construction of new-generation data centers is a system project, and mainly a system project for the construction of mechanical and electrical facilities, IT must not only have a strong enough power supply system, cooling system and dynamic distribution system, but also meet IT high availability, high continuity and high flexibility requirements.

There is no uniform and authoritative definition of the next-generation data center at home and abroad. Each Vendor puts forward their respective views based on their own development strategies and product lines. It is widely believed that the new generation of data centers must have the following basic features: virtualization, integration, green energy saving, security, automation, performance optimization, and so on, can be called the next-generation data center. We believe that the new generation of data centers should have the following features.

1. Flexibility

Flexibility is one of the important indicators of a new generation of data centers, and it is also an inevitable requirement in the process of institutional business changes. Organizations must make dynamic adjustments to IT resources when expanding and increasing their businesses. Resources cannot be provided in a timely manner when the business increases, or resources cannot be recovered in a timely manner when the business decreases, which will adversely affect the operation of the Organization.

Virtualization technology is an important means to achieve business flexibility. With less hardware and power consumption, it can achieve greater processing capabilities. A large number of organizations have adopted virtualization products for resource integration. These products allow virtualization applications to be extended to fields other than servers, including storage and network devices.

2. Green and energy-saving

Energy consumption is the main O & M cost of the data center. Building a green data center can save O & M costs, increase the capacity of the data center, improve the reliability of the power system, and increase scalability. Ideally, green data centers can reduce the energy consumption of air conditioners by 20% to in the case of power supply to the same IT equipment through virtualization, blade servers, and water cooling ~ 45%. Therefore, green data centers are one of the important directions for the development of new-generation data centers. As for how to achieve green and Environmental Protection of Data Centers, from chips, servers, storage to network equipment vendors, and even software vendors, they are all adopting a more optimized design, while improving product performance, Alibaba Cloud strives to launch more energy-saving products to help the data center achieve energy-saving and consumption-reduction. Service providers can fully implement green and energy-saving policies from the perspective of data center lifecycle, from construction to O & M.

3. Modularization

The new generation of data centers should have modular features. These modules are standards-based and can be flexibly purchased and obtained with extremely high security features, it is particularly important to adopt a service-oriented architecture so that organizations can deploy new businesses and applications more flexibly and dynamically.

The modular construction of data centers will be more flexible and more suitable for the future development of data centers. There is no need to regard the data center as a single whole. We can divide the data center into multiple functional areas by application, service type, and resource consumption rate. Each functional area can be dynamically upgraded and maintained without affecting the operation of other areas. For example, the density can be divided into high-density areas and general density areas. In high-density areas, the floor load-bearing, cooling system and power supply configurations are higher, which can meet the needs of data center services with higher requirements. Of course, there are many other classification methods. For example, data centers can be divided into operation centers, test centers, disaster recovery centers, and other independent areas by application type.

4. Integration

Integration is an important management method in the new generation of data centers. Organizations can reset servers to improve server utilization efficiency or use new blade servers to improve data center utilization efficiency. Organizations can also integrate data center resources by using virtualization technology and disabling high-energy and low-efficiency data centers.

5. Automation

The new generation data center should have fast service delivery capabilities to achieve automated management of visibility and controllability. At the same time, it can provide higher efficiency, lower cost and faster response speed, enables organizations to easily respond to service changes and development needs. In the next-generation data center, automated management tools are required to intelligently and automatically deploy a large number of complex IT management tasks. The new generation of automated management technology will cover desktop devices, servers, networks, storage and backup platforms, and reduce manual intervention, so as to effectively avoid power outages and other problems caused by human errors.

6. Stability and Security

Early data center infrastructure could not be quickly recovered from the disruption accident. At the same time, network attacks and network viruses made a lot of trouble for Data Center Security. System stability and security will surely become the basic attribute of the next-generation data center. Virtualization technology plays an increasingly important role in system reliability. It can integrate various heterogeneous resources. When a system fails, dynamic migration can be implemented to ensure uninterrupted operation of applications.

7. virtualization and cloud computing

The new generation of data centers should be virtualized. virtualization will break the constraint between IT users and IT resources and simplify complex systems. Virtualization is one of the important technologies that affect the development of the next generation of data centers. The advantage of virtualization is that it effectively improves the utilization efficiency of data centers, reduces investment costs, and integrates and optimizes the resources and performance of existing servers, it can flexibly and dynamically meet business development needs. Virtualization allows the infrastructure resources hosted by the data center to be freely accessible like water and electricity. The business model closely linked to virtualization is cloud computing, and the core of cloud computing is virtual resource sharing.