What is a Cloud Data Center?
A cloud data center is a large-scale data center managed and operated by a cloud service provider. Customers can then rent servers and infrastructure from the provider without having to worry about sourcing, buying, and maintaining their hardware components and space. Cloud data centers also offer more flexibility in terms of resource usage and payment.
Composition of a Data Center
To work, a data center first needs an electrical supply. This will be used to power servers ranging from a few dozen to several tens of thousands in number, depending on the size of the data center. The machines are installed in racks. They connect to the network via a very high-bandwidth fiber optic connection, allowing speeds of several terabits per second. Mechanical ventilation or cooling is essential to prevent the computers from overheating in the rooms. To ensure service continuity and prevent outages, the various power systems and other technologies that keep the servers running are redundant, so if required, a secondary system takes over to continue the service.
OVHcloud Data Centers
Over 20 years of experience have enabled us to build cutting-edge and resilient data centers in the most optimized way and with the lowest possible environmental footprint. We take pride in managing our entire chain, from server design to data center connections, as well as day-to-day monitoring and routine maintenance.
Data Center Security
By definition, a data center houses data. These can be sensitive, valuable, or simply vital to a company’s business. For these reasons, a data center must be secure at all levels to avoid any loss or leakage of information. At OVHcloud, we apply numerous security standards and are PCI DSS, HDS, and SecNumCloud certified. Access to buildings is restricted to employees performing day-to-day maintenance as well as to those who need to do work on an ad hoc basis only. Physical building security and access control are carried out 24 hours a day, in addition to security cameras and other surveillance systems.
Energy consumption: a challenge for data centers
Powering tens of thousands of computing servers is a real challenge, and the energy consumption involved is at the heart of our concerns. We work every day to minimize the power consumption of our data centers while maintaining optimal operation. But powering the servers isn’t the only energy-intensive process. Cooling systems, which often use air conditioners, also consume a lot of energy. That is why we have opted for a system that is much more environmentally friendly: water cooling. This system, coupled with the natural airflow in the rooms and buildings for additional energy efficiency, allows us to avoid using air conditioning to cool our servers. The Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) has been greatly reduced as a result, currently ranging from 1.3 to 1.09, whereas the rest of the industry has a PUE closer to 2.
In light of the digital transformation taking place, we are considering new storage methods for our data centers. With the growing need for cloud services, the number of data centers worldwide will continue to grow. Our R&D teams are working every day to anticipate and create the systems of the future while continuing to respect the environment. OVHcloud is a signatory to the Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact, which aims to make data centers climate-neutral by 2030. Through five key elements, we want our data centers to run on renewable energy by 2025, with zero emissions by 2030.
The future of data centers
These five key actions will help us achieve this goal:
- Using PUE and WUE (Water Usage Effectiveness) indicators to monitor consumption, which currently is at the lowest level in our data centers
- Optimizing resources and how we use them
- Gradually increasing the percentage of renewable energy used
- Strengthening the circular economy and upgrading components throughout their life cycle
- Mobilizing our ecosystem, from our customers to our suppliers and partners.
Which products and solutions are hosted in data centers?
Whether it’s standard web hosting, dedicated servers for physical infrastructures, VPS, public cloud, or private cloud for cloud computing, all of our solutions and products are hosted in our data centers. The scalability of your favorite solutions, whether in terms of virtualization or physical servers, was taken into account during the design of the data center itself, so hardware will never be an obstacle to your expansion.
What types of solutions can be hosted in a data center?
Most of the most widely used cloud computing services are adapted and hosted in data centers. The cloud infrastructure remains the same for Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Shared web hosting is another solution run from data centers, and offers the most affordable prices for hosting both personal and business websites.
What are the benefits of a data center?
Cost reduction is one of the benefits of data centers. Industrializing the production chain and maintaining our infrastructure means that services can be provided at a much more affordable price than an individual solution. You don’t have to worry about hardware storage or the various work and costs associated with general hardware maintenance and IT resources, such as changing or adding RAM, processors (CPU), hard drives, or replacing motherboards.