Exploring data center architectures

A data center is a dedicated building or a group of buildings that contains a huge collection of servers, networking devices, and security appliances that are maintained by an organization. Medium and large organizations create a data center that allows IT professionals to house all their servers and critical applications within a dedicated space on their network. This concept allows centralized management and a dedicated facility with proper environmental controls such as Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems, multiple internet connections from various Internet Service Providers (ISPs), redundant power supplies to support the availability of resources needed by the organization, and so on.

While the idea of owning a data center is amazing, it’s quite costly to build and maintain one. However, there are service providers that are building and maintaining data centers to allow customers to simply rent or lease the resources...