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As the bastions of our critical business data, data centres are made up of complex systems that must be balanced in order to ensure their smooth and cost-effective operations. Data centres must be reliable, always available, secure and efficient. In order to meet these objectives they in turn are dependent on a constant supply of power, connectivity, and on having an infrastructure in place that can support this.

CONNECTIVITY - THE HEART OF THE DATA CENTRE
Availability of the secure network forms a crucial part of this infrastructure. After all, what good is redundancy and disaster recovery if the data centre network that transmits the data isn't reliable? To this end, one solution is to have connectivity supplied in two independent streams to ensure that if one of them is compromised, the data centre can continue operating without downtime. However, this may not always be a viable or cost efficient option and some data centre providers may choose instead to install their own networks. Not only does this offer an added level of reliability, but it ensures that there is always sufficient bandwidth for its customers.

POWER SUPPLY - RENEWABLE OR SELF-GENERATION?
In an ideal world power should also be sourced from two separate grids to ensure a degree of fail over and resilience. However, as with the network and connectivity, this also is not always practical or cost efficient. According to the US Department of Energy, data centres use up to 100 times more power than regular office buildings and in 2012 they accounted for almost 1.5 per cent of the world's energy usage. Further, electricity costs contribute significantly to a data centre's total cost of ownership. With the cost of electricity on the increase, generation struggling to meet demand and the drive to reduce carbon footprints and environmental impact under way, data centres are constantly seeking ways to improve their energy efficiency.

There is a strong drive among data centre operators towards renewable energy including wind, solar and biomass. Taking that a step further is the concept of self-generation, which can bring benefits to both the operator and the customer. Recently we have seen increasing numbers of data centre providers invest in producing their own power. While the motivation for this is not so much driven by failover as it is by cost, self-generation does also address this issue.

ALL ROUND SECURITY
Data security is cited as one of the main obstacles to cloud adoption as entrusting business critical information and systems to a third party can be daunting. This is especially true if companies host their data in a multi-tenant environment. Confidential data, intellectual property and other critical information such as payment card details (depending on the nature of the business) must be kept safe physically, as well as from cyber-attacks. At the very least the data centre should be ISO 27001 compliant and have top quality anti-virus software, hardware firewalls, intrusion detection alerts and perform regular security audits.

From a physical security point of view, the process begins with the location, taking into consideration aspects such as legal jurisdiction and data sovereignty issues. It further extends to the construction of the building itself, the perimeter defences, employing security staff, vetting data centre employees, access control and managing additional secure access to the heart of the data centre. This aspect of security is equally as important as the safety of data.

In short, data centre operators must ensure that they are able to reduce costs and remain competitive. In addition, this must be achieved without compromising on quality of service, availability and the security that is reasonably expected in this competitive industry. NC