• About Us
  • Partnership Opportunities
  • Privacy Policy

Data Center Frontier

Charting the future of data centers and cloud computing.

  • Cloud
    • Hyperscale
  • Colo
    • Site Selection
    • Interconnection
  • Energy
    • Sustainability
  • Cooling
  • Technology
    • Internet of Things
    • AI & Machine Learning
    • Edge Computing
    • Virtual Reality
    • Autonomous Cars
    • 5G Wireless
    • Satellites
  • Design
    • Servers
    • Storage
    • Network
  • Voices
  • Podcast
  • White Papers
  • Resources
    • COVID-19
    • Events
    • Newsletter
    • Companies
    • Data Center 101
  • Jobs
You are here: Home / Special Reports / Balancing the Benefits of Data Center, Cloud, and Colocation Solutions

Balancing the Benefits of Data Center, Cloud, and Colocation Solutions

By Doug Mohney - November 30, 2021

Balancing the Benefits of Data Center, Cloud, and Colocation Solutions

The NTT Global Data Centers Americas CHI data center in Itasca, Illinois. (Photo: NTT Global Data Centers Americas )

LinkedinTwitterFacebookSubscribe
Mail

Last week we continued our special report series on the hybrid cloud. This week, we’ll look at the benefits and limits of data center, cloud, and colocation solutions.

hybrid cloud

Get the full report

Enterprises have a range of options for their IT needs. Data center, cloud only, and colocation solutions all have significant benefits and limitations. One “size” doesn’t fit all for today’s needs and the rapidly changing requirements for tomorrow.

Data Center: The Anchor

Traditional data centers provide numerous benefits. They hold and store institutional knowledge of the enterprise’s IT policies and philosophies within its personnel, documentation, and equipment and usually serve as the coordinating organization for all IT resources, including cloud and colocation.

  • Enterprise-owned space and equipment offer high levels of data control
    • Servers operated and maintained by enterprise-badged employees
    • Physical access control for servers and other IT resources may not be as tight or intrusive as multiple layers of physical security found at colocation facilities
  • Data centers may provide IT support to the enterprise
    • First-line user-facing help desk organizations
    • Second-tier support for more complex issues and problems

Expansion is very capital expensive. Existing facilities can’t be stopped in mid-operation to be refitted for enhanced power and cooling to meet compute- intensive workload demands.

  • The data center environment is built for operations and stability
    • Not designed for wholesale experimentation, development, scaling/hyperscaling
    • Difficult to sandbox and deploy publicly-facing applications within the security perimeter of enterprise IT operations.
  • Expansion is very capital expensive
    • Difficult to be agile with new projects and facilities
    • Existing facilities can’t be stopped in mid-operation to be refitted for enhanced power and cooling to meet compute-intensive workload demands
  • Network connectivity is only as good as provisioned
    • Upstream broadband outages affect the data center and the entire enterprise since branch office data traffic is routed through a central location for management and security

Cloud: Easy, Limits to Scale and Customization

The idea of purchasing computing as a service is not a new one, with today’s cloud offerings simplifying the process to a simple e-commerce transaction.

  • Ease of purchase via web portal and credit card
  • Many services available through the cloud
    • Software, storage, backup, APIs incorporated into larger business applications, bare metal servers, virtual machines, container environments, and GPU services for machine learning and other specialized tasks
  • Enterprise developers can easily “sandbox” applications outside of the corporate security perimeter
    • Little/no risk to critical data
  • Applications and resources scalable to some extent
    • Scalability available without overbuilding existing data center infrastructure
  • Cloud services have single points of failure
    • At the point of the applications service provider
    • Upstream at the cloud provider
  • Third-party control and operation of the cloud can mean higher security risks
    • Applications service provider and cloud provider both attack surfaces
    • Sheer size makes clouds lucrative targets for bad actors
  • Cloud services do not offer bespoke customization needed for specific problems
    • Cloud optimized for volume delivery based on least cost rather than best service delivery
  • Clouds don’t economically scale for large problems
    • More expensive than a data center or colocation using an optimized solution with dedicated hardware.

Colocation: Where Retail and Hyperscale Converge

With increasing needs for high-performance computing across applications, the worlds of hyperscale computing and retail colocation are beginning to merge. High-end colocation facilities enable enterprises to build and control bespoke facilities designed for their hyperscale needs, with the ability to support 5,000 or more servers under one roof, network connections at speeds of 40 Gbps and faster, and capacity to deliver megawatt class power for supporting GPUs and other compute-dense, power-hungry configurations not designed for the typical retail data center scenario.

The use of highly tuned systems with optimized servers for e-commerce and other low-latency, high-demand workloads, GPUs for AI/ML, and data analytics applications working with large amounts of storage are among the factors driving retail colocation into hyperscale territory as companies realize they need dedicated computing resources for hard problems beyond the economics of cloud.

Advantages high-end colocation facilities brings to hyperscaling include

  • The ability to build customizable hardware & network architecture to suit, taking advantage of in-place physical security, power, HVAC cooling
  • Availability of megawatt-class power for compute-dense needs such as GPUs
  • Superior network connectivity, including
    • High-speed low latency broadband connections to carriers and major exchange points with multiple physical paths for redundancy
    • Access to dark fiber for direct connections between enterprise and colocation facilities
    • Meet-me-style neutral network exchanges enabling gigabit Ethernet connectivity to multiple carrier networks and hyperscale clouds as needed
  • Facilities can be physically located in specific regions or countries, ensuring data is not taken out of the country/region of origin due to regulatory requirements

Connectivity comes into play at two different levels for building these solutions. The availability of dark fiber to directly connect the enterprise to the colocation facility is likely to be a must in many cases for both security and low latency. If workloads need to be more widely accessible outside of the enterprise by customers and partners, network connectivity through meet-me network exchanges ensure low-latency access for users.

Download the full report Hybrid Cloud, courtesy of NTT to learn more about how workloads are continuing to shift between data center, cloud, and colocation. In our next article, we’ll look at how workloads are driving current and future compute needs. Catch up on previous articles here and here. 

LinkedinTwitterFacebookSubscribe
Mail

Tagged With: Colocation, Hybrid cloud, Hyperscale data center, NTT

Newsletters

Stay informed: Get our weekly updates!

Are you a new reader? Follow Data Center Frontier on Twitter or Facebook.

About Doug Mohney

Doug Mohney has been working in and writing about IT and satellite industries for over 20 years. His real world experience including stints at two start-ups, a commercial internet service provider that went public in 1997 for $150 million and a satellite internet broadband company that didn't.Follow Doug on Twitter at @DougonIPComm

Comments

  1. bentecdigital@gmail.com'Bentec Digital says

    February 7, 2022 at 5:44 am

    Amazing piece of content, Thank you for sharing this blog….

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Voices of the Industry

Mitigate Risk, Improve Performance and Decrease Operating Expenses through Data Center Self-Performance

Mitigate Risk, Improve Performance and Decrease Operating Expenses through Data Center Self-Performance If a vendor conducts the actual work in your data center, then you or your operator aren’t maximizing your current operating resources and are experiencing incremental cost and risk. Chad Giddings of BCS Data Center Operations, explains the importance of your data center provider having a high-degree of self-performance.

White Papers

design

Reimagine Enterprise Data Center Design and Operations

Future Facilities explores how digital twin technology can be used to virtualize and fine tune data center design.

Get this PDF emailed to you.

We always respect your privacy and we never sell or rent our list to third parties. By downloading this White Paper you are agreeing to our terms of service. You can opt out at any time.

DCF Spotlight

Data center modules on display at the recent Edge Congress conference in Austin, Texas. (Photo: Rich Miller)

Edge Computing is Poised to Remake the Data Center Landscape

Data center leaders are investing in edge computing and edge solutions and actively looking at new ways to deploy edge capacity to support evolving business and user requirements.

An aerial view of major facilities in Data Center Alley in Ashburn, Virginia. (Image: Loudoun County)

Northern Virginia Data Center Market: The Focal Point for Cloud Growth

The Northern Virginia data center market is seeing a surge in supply and an even bigger surge in demand. Data Center Frontier explores trends, stats and future expectations for the No. 1 data center market in the country.

See More Spotlight Features

Newsletters

Get the Latest News from Data Center Frontier

Job Listings

RSS Job Openings | Pkaza Critical Facilities Recruiting

  • Electrical Commissioning Engineer - Los Angeles, CA
  • Data Center Construction Project Manager - Ashburn, VA
  • Critical Power Energy Manager - Data Center Development - Dallas, TX
  • Data Center Facilities Operations VP - Seattle, WA
  • Senior Electrical Engineer - Data Center - Dallas, TX

See More Jobs

Data Center 101

Data Center 101: Mastering the Basics of the Data Center Industry

Data Center 101: Mastering the Basics of the Data Center Industry

Data Center Frontier, in partnership with Open Spectrum, brings our readers a series that provides an introductory guidebook to the ins and outs of the data center and colocation industry. Think power systems, cooling, solutions, data center contracts and more. The Data Center 101 Special Report series is directed to those new to the industry, or those of our readers who need to brush up on the basics.

  • Data Center Power
  • Data Center Cooling
  • Strategies for Data Center Location
  • Data Center Pricing Negotiating
  • Cloud Computing

See More Data center 101 Topics

About Us

Charting the future of data centers and cloud computing. We write about what’s next for the Internet, and the innovations that will take us there. We tell the story of the digital economy through the data center facilities that power cloud computing and the people who build them. Read more ...
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

About Our Founder

Data Center Frontier is edited by Rich Miller, the data center industry’s most experienced journalist. For more than 20 years, Rich has profiled the key role played by data centers in the Internet revolution. Meet the DCF team.

TOPICS

  • 5G Wireless
  • Cloud
  • Colo
  • Connected Cars
  • Cooling
  • Cornerstone
  • Coronavirus
  • Design
  • Edge Computing
  • Energy
  • Executive Roundtable
  • Featured
  • Finance
  • Hyperscale
  • Interconnection
  • Internet of Things
  • Machine Learning
  • Network
  • Podcast
  • Servers
  • Site Selection
  • Social Business
  • Special Reports
  • Storage
  • Sustainability
  • Videos
  • Virtual Reality
  • Voices of the Industry
  • Webinar
  • White Paper

Copyright Endeavor Business Media© 2022