Importance of cloud data center site selection

Importance of cloud data center site selection

Microsoft 12, SoftLayer9, and Amazon8 ...... Each cloud service provider uses the number of data centers as a promotional capital. What I want to ask is what kind of protection will be provided by multiple data centers, and what is the significance.

Recently, David Mytton of Gigaom explained in detail the importance of choosing the geographical location of the cloud computing center, and listed the locations and quantities of data centers configured by some giants, as well as the reasons for the selection.

Currently, the cloud infrastructure market is fiercely competitive, and every vendor is trying to make itself as unique as possible. Infrastructure construction requires a lot of money. It is even more important to select the right location to configure assets. Cloud providers can innovate products or technologies, but their positions are equally important. Why?

Why is location important?

The diversity is important for the following reasons:

Redundancy: Compared with the possibility of Server failure, power outages in the entire data center are not common, but may also occur. To prevent power outages, Software defects, or extreme weather, it is important to distribute loads to multiple independent facilities. This not only enables data redundancy across data centers, but also across regions, so it can avoid local problems (such as bad weather or electrical faults ). Data centers need to be close to each other, which can reduce latency and ensure that the regions are separated.

Data protection: different types of data have different location requirements. For example, you need to retain personal data in the EU.

User latency: in some applications, the response time of end users is very important, so it is best to bring the data center closer to the user, and the ability to send traffic to different regions will help these implementations. Although some can use CDN, connectivity is usually necessary.

Deploying data centers around the world is not cheap, which is the advantage of large cloud providers. It not only configures equipment and personnel for the data center, but more importantly, innovation comes from the efficiency of those facilities. Does this mean that using the local geographic environment or building your own power system can make the data center more environmentally friendly? These can only help reduce the price when the scale is actually reached.

Current situation

Different vendors have the concept of a region, or the data center is in a specific region. Generally, they are divided into multiple regions, So redundancy can be achieved within the region, but real redundancy is not enough, because the entire region may fail, or a storm may occur in a region. Therefore, real geographic separation is very important.

Giant Site Selection

For a long time, Amazon has only one data center in Europe (although it has changed with the establishment of a new German Center), which is strange. If you want to maintain redundancy, you need two data centers. Otherwise, latency will be a problem. For example, replication of production databases between two data centers takes longer if data is to be sent across oceans (for example, from the United States to Ireland ). Replication between Ireland and Germany will be better!

Since 2014, Softlayer has been promoted to other regions as it claims to cost $1.2 billion in new data centers. Recently, it launched data centers in Hong Kong and London, and there are more plans to follow, 2 In the northern United States, 2 in Europe, Brazil, the United Arab Emirates, India, China, Japan, and Australia.

The most disappointing thing is Google, which spends a lot of money on infrastructure. In fact, there are many global data centers, not part of Google cloud. Of course, Google is newly added to the cloud market. Most of the demands come from search, Gmail, and other products, and consumers will take a dominant position. Considering the speed at which Google launches new features, if it really wants to compete with others, it will soon make progress.

About China

I specifically excluded China from the above data, but it is still an interesting case. The problem is that, even if the connection in China is very good (in some regions), the cross-border operation will significantly increase latency and packet loss. Microsoft and Amazon both have data centers in China, but they need a separate account, generally, you must apply in China. Softlayer announced the establishment of a data center in Shanghai. It is worth noting whether it can be connected to a global VPC with good throughput? Google has publicly left China four years ago, so it cannot launch a data center here.

Obviously, the position will be a competitive advantage. At present, Microsoft takes the lead, but will soon lose to Softlayer. Considering the amount of investment, it is worth noting where the next step of cloud availability will expand.