A “data center”, or “datacenter” in English, is an infrastructure specifically designed for the installation and operation of servers.
A data center can host servers from different companies, set up for different purposes: traffic cameras, storage of medical and banking data, machines dedicated to research, etc.
They are buildings with different rooms where cooled metal racks, full of internet and power cables are installed, which will later be filled with servers that will run 24 hours a day.
This infrastructure, for obvious reasons, must be practically a bunker with thousands of machines running inside and must have, among others, the following features:
- Low-risk site: It must be located in an area with a low risk of flooding, earthquakes, fires, or nearby explosions that could affect the building.
- Physical security: 24-hour surveillance, external and internal fencing with multiple access levels, employee identification, advanced security devices.
- Fire safety: Advanced fire suppression systems; a widely used strategy in data centers is to remove oxygen from the rooms.
- Self-sufficient in the event of a supply outage: Power generators in case of a power cut, water tank, etc.
- Redundant internet backbone connection: It must be connected to the internet in a special way; these centers can be connected with links of more than 20 Gbps directly to different providers or interconnection centers, with different cables and via different routes, so that if one temporarily fails, another route can be used.
- Cooled and efficient: One of the building’s main tasks is to cool its interior; a room with 40,000 machines or servers running 24 hours a day is, without a doubt, a massive heat generator, and if this heat is not dissipated, the machines could start to fail. In addition, due to the cost of this cooling, data centers invest heavily in energy efficiency both for the servers and for their cooling.
- Qualified technicians: There must be qualified technicians on site 24 hours a day to solve any physical problem with any machine at any time. Also to monitor the status of the network and fend off attacks that may reach the data center via the internet (which is very common).
To learn more, Google has a website where it talks about its data centers.