Data Center Technologies

As a company considers their Austin data center options, it is important for them to also consider the various technologies available to these facilities. Here a few of the most common technologies and resources available to today’s Austin data centers.All companies should be aware of these factors:

1. Alternative Energy Resources–Alternative energies like solar and wind power are showing great potential to generate electricity in a sustainable way. The biggest challengefor many Austin data centers that choose alternative energies is the need for a consistent supply that can satisfy a facility’s high service needs. If a data center uses alternative energy but needs to tap into the power supply from local power utility, any cost savings they might have seen from alternative energy sources could disappear quickly. Alternative energy sources will play a much larger role in data center operations once better storage mechanisms are developed to store excess capacity. Today, water and air-based systems show much more potential as sustainable energy options.

2. Cloud Computing – Cloud computing is a type of computing that is dynamically scalable through virtual resources provided as an Internet service. In this, an organization shouldn’t concern themselves with the specific technical details of their remote services. Cloud computing provides many different options with varying quality, compliance, control, and security.

3. Colocation – Most Austin data centers provide a service known as colocation,in whichservers are leased by a company. In this option, data centers provide multiple organizations with the same facilities to sharepower, cooling, and maintenance.

4. Remote Hands – A term many companies may not be aware of when they review Austin data services is remote hands. In a dedicated hosting or data center facility, remote hands refers to the support services provided by the center. Remote handsare available for engineering purposes, including the maintenance of IT equipment and proper inspection.

5. Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) – UPS is an extremely important term to understand for any business looking at Austin data center services. UPS refers to the system that is ultimately responsible for providing backup power to IT systems in the event of a power failure. This power supply is the one that kicks in prior to the primary power backup supply. These systems are usually battery based systems.

6. Virtualization–Virtualization addresses a major challenge that many IT organizations face. What virtualization does in an Austin data center is create a virtual version of a device, like an operating system or server. Because of virtualization, multiple applications can reside on one device and several systems can be maintained enterprise-wide.

These are just a few of the technologies a company will learn about during the process of evaluating data center providers. No matter what other technologies they provide, the crucial thing for companies is to make sure they understand them all as completely as possible.