Data center
A data center (American English)[1] or data centre (Commonwealth English)[2][note 1] is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings[3] used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems.[4][5]
Since IT operations are crucial for business continuity, it generally includes redundant or backup components and infrastructure for power supply, data communication connections, environmental controls (e.g., air conditioning, fire suppression), and various security devices. A large data center is an industrial-scale operation using as much electricity as a small town.[6] Estimated global data center electricity consumption in 2022 was 240-340 TWh, or roughly 1-1.3% of global electricity demand. This excludes energy used for cryptocurrency mining, which was estimated to be around 110 TWh in 2022, or another 0.4% of global electricity demand.[7]
Data centers can vary widely in terms of size, power requirements, redundancy, and overall structure. Four common categories used to segment types of data centers are onsite data centers, colocation facilities, hyperscale data centers, and edge data centers.[8]
Dynamic infrastructure[108] provides the ability to intelligently, automatically and securely move workloads within a data center[109] anytime, anywhere, for migrations, provisioning,[110] to enhance performance, or building co-location facilities. It also facilitates performing routine maintenance on either physical or virtual systems all while minimizing interruption. A related concept is Composable Infrastructure, which allows for the dynamic reconfiguration of the available resources to suit needs, only when needed.[111]
Side benefits include
Micro data center[edit]
Micro Data Centers (MDCs) are access-level data centers which are smaller in size than traditional data centers but provide the same features.[118] They are typically located near the data source to reduce communication delays, as their small size allows several MDCs to be spread out over a wide area.[119][120] MDCs are well suited to user-facing, front end applications.[121] They are commonly used in edge computing and other areas where low latency data processing is needed.[122]