Utilizing Cloud Data Centers

While some larger organizations continue to manage internal data center, many business managers are able to increase service levels, cover more users, and lower response times by outsourcing their out-dated server farms to third-party data centers and cloud computing providers. These third-party data center providers are better equipped to maintain and update server equipment. This article explores data centers and cloud networking.

Leveraging third-party computing capability over the network is a good way to cut costs, increase scale, and improve agility. The concept of cloud computing involves a data center somewhere in the world, or even multiple data centers scattered around the world. This is a paradigm shift from the historical client-server architecture where the network users owned, maintained, and operated their own network infrastructure, server rooms, data servers, and applications. 

Typical cloud computing providers deliver common business applications online that are accessed from web browsers, while the software and data are stored on the servers or SAN devices. These applications are broadly divided into the following categories: Software as a Service (SaaS), Utility Computing, Web Services, Platform as a Service (PaaS), Managed Service Providers (MSP), Service Commerce, and Internet Integration.

There are many resources available in a data center and in the cloud that a client can purchase or rent, such as processing time, network bandwidth, disk storage, and memory. The users of the cloud do not need to know where the data center is, or have any expertise on how to operate or maintain the resources in the cloud. Clients only need to know how to connect to the resources and how to use the applications needed to perform their jobs.

With cloud-based computing, the applications run on servers in the data center, not the local laptop or desktop computer the user is operating. The user’s computer provides a window into the application, but does not actually run the application; in other words, it runs a user interface. This procedure reduces the need for big processing power and memory on the end user’s computer and centralizes it in the data center

Resources Cisco Data Center Technologies –

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns949/index.html Wikipedia –

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtualization IEEE –

http://ieee802.org/3/hssg/public/nov06/diminico_01_1106.pdf Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA-942) – http://tiaonline.org/