Tag Archives: Data Management

In the current business environment, your customers demand that their questions are addressed immediately and solutions for their problems are promptly applied. Business owners cannot permit remote locations and network interruptions from impacting their ability to provide services. This article will discuss four methods for improving data availability in your company’s data center. Consult with an expert and experienced managed IT services firm for the best results.

Disaster Recovery

Disasters that can affect a company’s data availability are not necessarily only from natural causes such as an earthquake or flood. They can be caused by something as common as a power outage due to a technical problem at the electrical utility. Fortunately, you can prepare your company in the event that access to your critical and sensitive business is interrupted by having a disaster recovery plan in place, which may feature solutions such as co-location and cloud storage.

Single Point of Failure Elimination

Your IT infrastructure will be able to eliminate single points of failure by backing up and having alternatives ready. Work with a managed services provider (MSP) to evaluate your company’s network architecture and consider solutions such as clustering, load balancing, redundancy, and virtualization.

Proactive Monitoring

Having a sound recovery plan that is regularly modified and tested is essential for the prevention of data loss. However, proactive monitoring of your company’s IT infrastructure may even be important because it may stop a disaster from occurring in the first place.

Virtualization and Cloud Computing

Your company’s data availability can be bolstered through the application of virtualization and cloud computing. Securely storing critical IT resources at a service provider’s data center ensures that critical business data is both backed up and available in the event of a disaster.

Progressive Office Cabling

Founded in 1986, Progressive Office’s success has been a direct result of years of commitment to seeking solutions on behalf of our clients in the Washington, D.C. and New York City areas. Efficiently working together, Progressive teams get cabling installed and operating as fast as possible while minimizing disruption and downtime. Call our toll free number (800) 614-4560 today.

As discussed in Part 2, Top-Down Logic is used for the process of Preparation, Planning, Design, Implementation, Operation, and Optimization (PPDIOO). In addition, network designers must determine the Scope of Design prior to the collection of data and planning. Part 3 will cover Business Requirements, Continuity, and Elasticity.

Requirements

Figuring out what an organization needs requires having an understanding of its current objectives, mission statement, and future plans. Knowledge of these should guide the business-driven aspects of the network design. Using a top-down approach, a business’s goals, drivers, requirements, continuity, and strategy will determine its business applications, technical and functional requirements, and network infrastructure solutions.

Continuity

Business continuity is a company’s ability to continue doing business after a system outage caused by a man-made or natural disaster that has damaged a data center. An organization needs a disaster recovery plan to develop its resiliency in the face of such disasters. Various parts of its network may need to be more resilient due to regulatory compliance.

Elasticity

Elasticity is an organization’s level of flexibility when responding to business developments. This typically refers to a change in business objectives or conditions, including growth, recession, merger, acquisition, etc. Therefore, a company’s network design must have adequate flexibility in order to fulfill its business requirements and strategic goals. A designer’s comprehension of the overall trends of the organization’s business sector will provide valuable guidance in the design’s features that provide flexibility.

The design of a network must give an organization the flexibility that will allow it to perform integrations with other networks. This will usually be required when mergers and acquisitions take place. It is important to note that during a merger or acquisition, the network may undergo considerable growth during a very brief period. In such circumstances, the most daunting challenge for network designers is having to handle the various design principles, conflicting control plane protocols, and overlaps in IP address spaces of the networks being integrated.

Progressive Office Cabling

Founded in 1986, Progressive Office’s success has been a direct result of years of commitment to seeking solutions on behalf of our clients in the Washington, D.C. and New York City areas. Efficiently working together, Progressive teams get cabling installed and operating as fast as possible while minimizing disruption and downtime. Call our toll free number (800) 614-4560 today.

As discussed in Part 1, structured cabling is now considered the foundation of network infrastructure, and organizations and their data centers are seeking ways to improve its efficiency and functionality through several trends. Part 2 will discuss Modularization, Optimization, and Virtualization.

Modularization

New data centers are now being built to support ever-increasing networking demands. Companies are participating by determining which modular data center cabling solutions to implement in order to be future-proofed as this technology grows more sophisticated.

They are also seeking the ability to better scale data and network resources, which will decrease capital expenditure for infrastructure and thus increase the potential for profits.

These organizations are also rapidly implementing virtual data center solutions.

Featuring modules and components that are specially designed, modular data centers are portable, scalable, and containerized. Capable of supporting converged infrastructures, a modular data center requires sound data cabling infrastructure to be effective.

Optimization

An organization that may not be able to build a new data center can still upgrade its existing data cabling. In addition, data center providers are rapidly being chosen as a cost-effective method for optimizing network infrastructure.

Although copper and fiber cabling are considered adequate, there is a growing demand for connectivity that is speedier and more efficient for apps, computers, servers, and storage systems. Optimizing data cabling is the most direct way to obtain this by standardizing components such as cabling, racks, cabinets, etc.

Virtualization

Research has found that more than half of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are now running workloads on virtual machines. In comparison, data center providers are utilizing virtualization at a rate of at least 95%.

Virtualization technology is establishing itself as a proven, scalable, and cost-effective option for networking. Virtualization most commonly functions on computers, networks, servers, and storage systems. The most essential feature of network virtualization is well-designed structured data cabling.

Progressive Office Cabling

Founded in 1986, Progressive Office’s success has been a direct result of years of commitment to seeking solutions on behalf of our clients in the Washington, D.C. and New York City areas. Efficiently working together, Progressive teams get cabling installed and operating as fast as possible while minimizing disruption and downtime. Call our toll free number (800) 614-4560 today.