Overview of the data center and the cloud

Over the years, we have shifted our data centers strategies quite significantly as it relates to the hardware our services run on. The OS types, versions, and virtualization of those services have recently shifted to fully cloud-based technologies. A traditional enterprise data center typically consisted of mainframes to store and access information. Data centers during these times were located on location or at a separate facility under management of the organization. As technology evolved, there was a shift from mainframe to server-based data centers. This is where the Windows Server family became widely adopted and grew in popularity.

Moving beyond standard hardware-based server models comes virtualization. The ability to run many servers on only a few physical servers changed the dynamics of the data center significantly. Today, we are in a major shift to cloud computing. Organizations are slowly moving away from the traditional on...