Facilities
Cyclical Evolution
of Data Centres
The fashions of the IT cycle. By Carrie Higbie, global
data centre director for network infrastructure
experts Siemon.
Computer rooms, to bigger computer virtualized, ran on shielded twinax wide area networks. We began
rooms, to distributed computing to cabling to terminals, terminals installing fibre to talk longer distances
data centres, back to multiple communicated directly with the and companies started expanding
computer rooms or dual redundant mainframe, users utilized dumb communications in lieu of paper and
data centres... one thing is for certain terminals and all data was stored telephone calls. One data centre was
- how and where we store and centrally on very expensive disks. now supporting multiple sites without
retrieve data is changing. But it is not the need for data entry personnel to
changing in a evolutionary manner. In moving to PC’s on the desktop, we enter information from remote offices.
Rather, data handling is more like could virtualize a dumb terminal but Tapes for backup increased and data
fashion - bell bottom jeans have, in my still create and store work documents was backed up mostly for the
lifetime, gone from the height of locally or on a network. Network business’s use, not due to mandates
fashion to the butt of jokes back to the storage began its downward spiral in and legislation.
mainstream. Unlike old clothes price and capacity. Floppy disks
however, we cannot ask our old made it possible to share information Onward and upward, we began
technology to support our current and from one PC to another that was not distributing servers at multiple
future network needs, even if data located on a network. And PCs were locations so that the increasing
centre “fashions” come full circle. connected on these networks via amounts of data could be stored at
shielded coaxial cable, first daisy multiple locations for faster local
In the last 10 to 15 years, we have chained, then in a star topology. access . We needed the ability as our
seen a cycle of single computer rooms applications got bigger and bigger,
with shielded cabling, mainframes Then we moved to telephone cable and we began analyzing the data in
(which were the first examples of and modems for communications. ever increasing algorithms to use
virtualization) and dumb terminals This made our local area networks technology not as a necessity for
move to PC based networks, shared accounting and simple business
PC’s, to now clustering those functions but also to give companies a
computers together to achieve more competitive edge.
processing power. We have seen
bandwidth needs increase significantly As WAN speeds increased, the need
along with storage demands. With for disparate servers decreased.
increased loads for data retention and Companies began to realize that the
accessibility, single computer rooms data (which at this point is becoming
are no longer adequate for many more and more critical to the
enterprises. Everything old is new business) needed a home that could
again! For instance, mainframes were be controlled. Accidental slip ups like
September 2008
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