Data centers are buildings that house network infrastructure, including space, power, and cooling, for businesses IT operations and equipment. Since businesses rely on data access and security to maintain efficiency in their daily operations, data centers must be both secure and reliable. What most business owners and average consumers don’t realize is that there are actually many types of data centers. Read on to find out about the most important of them below.
Hyperscale Data Centers
A hyperscale data center is a facility that is owned and operated by one company. Tech giants like Apple, Google, and Microsoft all own hyperscale data centers to provide robust, scalable data storage. Hyperscale data centers are at least 10,000 square feet in size and feature upwards of 500 cabinets and a minimum of 5,000 servers on ultra-high-speed fiber count networks. These immense data centers require specialized forms of network maintenance and security, which is usually provided by a third-party vendor.
Colocation Data Centers
Colocation data centers are owned by individual companies but their power, space, and cooling are shared by multiple businesses or other entities. They offer interconnection to Software as a Service (SaaS) platforms that can help businesses keep their costs low. Data centers run by colocation companies also offer technical guidance to the companies that use them, and some provide integrated technical design, guidance, and specification services for migrating customers. Businesses can rent between one and one hundred cabinets, and most colocation centers can accommodate hundreds or thousands of customers.
Enterprise Data Centers
Some experts use the terms hyperscale and enterprise data centers interchangeably, but they’re slightly different. Enterprise data centers are owned and run by the companies they support and are often built on-site. They may outsource maintenance, but they run the spaces themselves internally. They typically consist of ten or more cabinets but are usually smaller than hyperscale or colocation data centers.
Telecom Data Centers
These specialized facilities are owned and run by telecom companies. They require high connectivity and are the primary driving forces behind telecom companies’ content delivery, mobile services, and cloud-based services. Some telecom data centers use two or four-post racks, but most are switching over to cabinets to house IT infrastructure. They use their own staff to install and manage the sites, which don’t tend to require much maintenance.
Edge Data Centers
Edge data centers are still in their infancy, and most facilities are still in the design phase. Once completed, they will house servers for autonomous vehicles and the Internet of Things (IoT), both of which are expected to run on 5G networks with high data transport requirements. It’s still too early to predict what edge computing will look like and how its data centers will be scaled, but expect these centers to become popular as IoT, automation, and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies continue to advance.
The Bottom Line
What all the different types of data centers described above have in common is that they require some level of network maintenance and security. This can be provided on-site, but the job is usually undertaken by third-party companies. As the world becomes more technologically advanced, experts expect data centers to become even larger, more innovative, and more connected, so that trend is unlikely to change.
