Web Hosting News

Please rate this article

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

When it comes to web hosting, data center is a popular term used for identifying where the physical servers are hosted. But, data centers are much more than just a place where servers are located. Data centers house computer hardware systems and associated components such as network, storage, backup power supplies, and backup communications channels such as failover lines and environment controls such as temperature control. Data centers are also equipped with disaster recovery mechanisms in case if something goes wrong. Data centers usually host data of millions of people and organizations. Therefore data centers needs to have special security devices and procedures in place for protecting the data they host and also to make sure the services are not interrupted due to hacking etc.

Since most of the organizations business continuity rely on the strength of the data centers services, it is vital for data centers to be consistent in their services. A minor mistake of a data center would be a business catastrophe for the organization. Therefore there are few requirements that should be met by the modern data centers.

There are four levels of data centers as ranging from Tier 1 to Tier 4. Tier 1 is a basic computer room, following basic guidelines of maintaining few servers and Tier 4 is a data center which hosts mission critical applications with backup (redundant) systems for storage, power and network. Tier 4 data centers would have biometric access control implemented. Physical layout is one of the important factors when it comes to data centers. This includes air conditioning, backup electricity power, the mechanisms for eliminating single point of failure, the physical arrangements of racks and the space between them for facilitating the air flow, fire protecting mechanisms (both active and passive) and physical security for protecting the physical components from unauthorized access.

Other than servers for hosting applications, data centers host routers and switches transporting traffic between the servers and the people who access them. There are number of security systems running for protecting the network such as firewalls and VPN gateways.