Summary
- A datacenter is infrastructure dedicated to housing computer and networking equipment, including power and cooling.
- Datacenters have evolved from simple rooms housing mainframe computers to large warehouses that store thousands of individual servers.
- As an organization's IT needs continually increase, modularity in datacenter components allows an organization to expand its infrastructure as needed.
- Servers are getting more and more dense, packing more CPU, RAM, and storage into each square foot. This has led to greater power consumption per rack. It is common for existing datacenters to run out of power or cooling before running out of floor space.
- Industry aims to increase its focus on "green" IT, or power-efficient computing, both inside and outside the server. This efficiency reduces power consumption and carbon footprint, decreasing operating expenses and increasing profit.
- Datacenters have become more efficient in the last few years through advances in virtualization, power-aware server hardware, efficient power distribution, and advanced cooling techniques, among others.