Ever come across a foreign term data centers use that you can’t seem to understand. Well, have you ever wondered what those terms mean? Here we have compiled for you a list of top 30 terms you should keep in your data center vocabulary.
1: ASHRAE: ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers) is a global association seeking to advance heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and refrigeration system designs and construction.
2: Blade Server: Blade Servers are stripped-down servers with modular designs which are optimized for space consolidation and quick maintenance. They help to minimize the use of physical space and energy.
3: Close Coupled Cooling: This is the latest generation cooling system. It works by bringing heat transfer closest to its source i.e. the equipment rack. By moving the air conditioner closer to the equipment rack, you can create a more precise delivery inlet and an immediate capture of exhaust air.
4: Cluster: A cluster is a networked group of servers. They may be remotely dispersed to form a virtual/software-defined cluster. They are used for applications which require multiple servers or storage working in tandem.
5: Containers: Data Center Containers are the deployment of data centers that are designed to add data center capacity and to reduce an organization’s cooling and power consumption costs. They are often used in virtual operating systems.
6: DR: DR (Disaster Recovery) is an area of security planning which aims to protect an organization from any emergency situations. It allows an organization to maintain mission-critical functions while the real data center is repaired or rebuilt.
7: Hybrid Clouds: Hybrid Cloud is a cloud computing environment in which one or more public cloud services are combined with your own data center resources to form a single virtually managed environment.
8: Hyperconverged: This term is used to define platforms. Hyperconverged platforms are basically turnkey products that include all the hardware and software one needs to run a contained little data center in a box.
9: PDU: PDU (Power Distribution Unit) is a device fitted with multiple outlets and designed to distribute electric power, especially used in racks of computers and networking equipment located within a data center.
10: PUE: PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) is a ratio used to describe how efficiently a computer data center uses energy. It is a ratio of the total energy used by the computing data center to the energy delivered to computing equipment. A perfect PUE would be 1. Modern Data Centers have a PUE of around 1.2-1.4.
11: Software-Defined Data Center: This is a marketing term used to describe virtualization concepts which are used to create, change, scale or delete software-defined networks at will. These networks can be hybrids or dispersed.
12: Data Center Tiers: Data Center Tiers are a system of certification of the kinds of data center infrastructure. Tier I is the simplest infrastructure and Tier IV is the most complex.
13: Big Data: Big Data is used to describe a massive volume of structured and unstructured data sets which is too large to be processed using traditional database and software techniques.
14: Carrier-Neutral Data Center: A carrier-neutral data center (or network-neutral data center) is a data center which facilitates interconnection between multiple telecommunication carriers and colocation providers. This enables customers to switch providers without physically moving to a new site.
15: Cloud On-Ramp: A Cloud On-Ramp is a dedicated infrastructure solution which provides a direct, private connection to the cloud from within a data center. The cloud providers could be the Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Rackspace etc.
16: Colocation Center: A colocation center (or carrier hotel) is a type of data center where retail customers can rent equipment, space, and bandwidth. Businesses can rent floor space for their serves, storage devices, and other IT hardware.
17: Express Routing: Express Routing is done through a private connection between a data center and its customer’s infrastructure, avoiding the public Internet and therefore providing higher reliability and lower latency.
18: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): IaaS is a type of online service which delivers virtualized computing resources over the internet, with hardware being provided and manages by some external service provider.
19: Internet of Things (IoT): IoT is a global network of smart devices which are connected via the Internet. This enables them to send and receive data easily.
20: Meet-Me-Room: This is an area within a colocation center where telecommunication companies can physically interconnect and exchange data without incurring local loop fees.
21: N+x Redundancy: N+1 redundancy is a type of resilience which ensures system availability in the event of component failure Therefore a component (N) has at least one independent backup component (+1). In case of two backups this would be N+2 and so on.
22: Private Branch Exchange (PBX): A PBX (Private Branch Exchange) is a telephone system within an enterprise that switches calls between users over shared phone lines and allows users to share a certain number of external phone lines.
23: Point of Presence (PoP): A PoP (Point of Presence) is an interface or artificial demarcation point between communicating entities. For example, an Internet Pop where the local access allows users to connect to the Internet with their Internet service provider.
24: Remote Hands: Remote hands is the name given to a service provided by colocation data centers which enable customers to delegate IT management and maintenance tasks within a colocation facility to technicians hired by the provider.
25: Subsea Cable: A subsea cable is a cable laid on the sea bed between land-based stations and used to carry telecommunication signals across the ocean.
26: Uptime: Uptime is a measure of the system reliability, calculated from the time that a piece of equipment is active and operational. It is usually expressed as a percentage.
27: Virtualization: Virtualization refers to the act of creating a logical or virtual version of something; this includes virtual computer hardware platforms, storage devices, and computer network resources. Virtualization helps to make more efficient use of IT hardware.
28: Green Data Center: A green data center (or sustainable data center) is a type of data center which utilizes energy-efficient technologies and has reduced environmental impact.
29: Internet Protocol Transit (IP Transit): IP Transit (or Internet Protocol Transit) is a service where an ISP (Internet Service Provider) enables traffic to transverse and travel through their network to its final destination.
30: Platform as a Service (PaaS): PaaS is a platform-based service which falls in the category of cloud computing services. It provides a platform which enables developers to build, run and manage apps and services over the internet.