Data is vitally important to the efficient functioning of the world. Data is stored in multiple places in both public and private locations. Previously data storage was fragmented and was stored in small servers, personal computers, hard disk, and physical systems located on-site. As the time progressed, most of the data were more or less moved to the data center. Today, companies and even consumers store their data in the cloud. Data center is exactly where all those cloud data are stored. The data that is being generated each year is growing at an exponential rate. As a result, data centers are being faced with the challenge to accommodate all data being generated in the world. So what are the key trends for data center that are set to gain traction in the year 2018?

Disaster recovery

It is evident that all the data that is stored in the cloud is stored somewhere at a remote location. So what if something unexpected were to happen at that location? Are data centers prepared for such level of natural disaster? The question is how are they equipped to handle a natural disaster such as earthquake, landslide, fire, and hurricane in order to protect data from millions of people and corporations? The majority if the cloud service providers are taking proactive measure to be prepared in case of such events happening. For instance, they can maintain the copy of the data at two different locations or use power capping policy in the event of power failure.

On-time maintenance and checking

Downtime in data centers can cost businesses millions of dollars in losses. It is something data centers cant afford. Data centers require ongoing monitoring and health checkups to ensure the set standards and quality are met. It is important for them to have a health management strategy in place which allows the companies to proactively mitigate issues before they grow into a company-wide disaster. Not many companies have health management strategies in place, however, the trend of adopting such strategies is fast picking up the pace.

Cloud vs on-premise data center

Although many companies still use on-premise data management processes, more and more companies are opting for cloud solutions due to its economical cost and scalability. Cloud data centers are growing rapidly and it may not be long before all organization opts for cloud platforms. The trend is set to pick up the pace in the year 2018 as more and more data center managers realize the benefits of outsourcing their data center environments.

The dominance of flash storage

We have had huge advances in storage technologies which can see floppy disk replaced by CD’s, CD’s by a hard disk, and hard disk by flash storage. Flash storage completely eliminates the limitations of magnetic drives which uses spinning disks and magnets to store information. On their earlier days, SSDs were very expensive and were only used in high-performance computing and big data workloads. Today, SSDs are readily seen in consumer electronics as well. As the prices of SSD and cost of data storage is in continuous decline, SSDs will be the preferred data storage mediums. Additionally, SSDs also assist companies to save on power costs which could result in savings of thousands of dollars in power and cooling.

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