A Data Center is a facility that houses IT infrastructure for building and running applications and services, in addition to managing data related to those applications. Data Centers have evolved in recent years and they have become important to various organizations and businesses. Due to its significance, Kenyans have taken part in adopting the technology.
Some of the most known Data Centers located in Nairobi, Kenya, are Africa Data Center (ADC Nairobi), Icolo Nairobi One (NBO1), and PAIX Nairobi-1 among others. These Data Centers have been designed to support multiple on-site and cloud activities, especially when it comes to business IT. Typically, they have changed how people and businesses engage with global networks and systems. Nairobi is considered a favorable location for Data Center development, with Mombasa being more popular with service providers.
The Data Centers have storage systems where most servers include some local storage capability-known as direct attached storage (DAS) – that enables the most frequently used data to remain close to the CPU. Moreover, Data Centers have a network that consists of various types of switches, routers, and fiber optics, that carries network traffic across servers. The network of the Data Center is usually virtualized. This enables the creation of software-defined overlay networks, which are built on top of the network’s physical infrastructure, to accommodate specific security controls.
In addition, the infrastructure of Data Centers in Kenya has components such as redundancy and data recovery. Data center operators and architects go to great lengths to increase the resiliency of their systems. It includes everything from redundant arrays of independent disks (RAIDS) to protect against data loss in case of storage media failures. Also, to back up data center cooling infrastructure that keeps the servers running at optimal temperatures, even if the primary cooling fails.
Furthermore, the Data Centers are designed and equipped to control environmental factors that may damage or destroy hardware and may lead to expensive downtime. Some of the factors include temperature; most of the Data Centers employ the combination of air cooling and liquid cooling to keep the servers and other hardware operating in the temperature ranges. Air cooling is air conditioning, specifically computer room air conditioning (CRAC) targeted at the entire server room, or specific rows or racks of servers.
Humidity is another environmental factor; high humidity can lead to rust equipment; low humidity can increase the risk of static electricity surges. Hence, the control of humidity is done using CRAC systems, proper ventilation, and humidity sensors. Fire is also considered another environmental factor. For various reasons, Data Centers have to be equipped with fire prevention equipment, which has to be tested regularly.
In summation, Data Centers act as key technology innovation that has managed to change the way various organizations operate. The importance of Data Centers has been traced which includes storage and backup of data among others. Therefore, as technology evolves, most organizations would tend to associate themselves with Data Centers, which would lead to economic growth in Kenya.