3 Big Considerations For A Data Center

Trying to plan a data center project? Check out these major considerations for building a central repository for data or otherwise housing large data sets for an enterprise.

Middleware

Along with setting up the actual hardware infrastructure for the data center, and evaluating things like security, planners also need to figure out the engineering of various middleware resources that will port data to and from this central warehouse.

Middleware is different in every industry. In some industries, like healthcare and finance, there's more of a focus on compliance with industry data standards. In other areas like retail, there's a big focus on accessibility of data, on data resolution, and on making sure that every bit of information is where it needs to be at any given time. Middleware programs often involve specific messaging platforms and interfaces to get data to end users, for instance, and to get customer data in front of sales reps. Although it may seem  peripheral, middleware is a central concern when it comes to using a data center well.

Data in Transit, Data at Rest

Data center planners also have to take into account the various and separate needs for data in different stages. Requirements for data in transit are going to be different than requirements for data in either warm or cold storage. Storage concerns often revolve around certain types of fundamental security measures and the durability of storage media. For data in transit, there are other security concerns related to hot spots, security gaps, and various kinds of hacking. But there's also the information consistency issue, where data that's in use has to correspond with what's going to be stored in other parts of the system. All of this takes a keen eye as well as an organized road map on the part of the business that is setting up the data center.

Maintenance

There's also the issue of ongoing maintenance for data center hardware systems. This is where customers have a number of choices. They can maintain all of the stuff in-house, which tends to get costly and difficult, and may require more staff. Or, they can go to the cloud and use remote vendors that offer Web-delivered hardware services. A third option is called co-location. With co-location, the company owns the hardware and systems, but they're stored off-site in a dedicated space where they are easy to maintain. Vendors will do the work of maintenance on the servers and other hardware pieces, in an environment with good cooling, high security, and other considerations for hardware.

Think about all of this when setting up a data center for business use. To find out more about data centers, contact a company like Cologix.