Benefits of hosting servers at data centers?

Question

There are several Data Center Network Designs, and I'm working on a research paper on this topic.

To start with I'd like to know why to use data centers? Obviously besides the amount of space 10k servers take and some other obvious reasons.

Then, what are the benefits of using data centers for hosting servers?

How does scalability, fault tolerance and bandwidth usage fits in?

When you say paper, this is a university assignment? If so, we'd best serve by pointing you at some good starting points for your research. — Chris Thorpe, Mar 01 '10 at 01:42
When you write your paper I suggest you proof read it a lot more than you did that question. — John Gardeniers, Mar 01 '10 at 08:59

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 01 '10 at 01:38

Data centers provide economies of scale. They can also provide hosting in more appropriate locations to help achieve business continuity or performance goals. Use of a data center might help meet a legal or regulatory requirement, or solve other specific business challenges.

How does scalability, fault tolerance and bandwidth usage fits in?

A data center may give you more scalability than you can build yourself, and will probably do it more cheaply. I don't understand the point of your question re fault tolerance and bandwidth usage though. Is this a homework assignment?

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 01 '10 at 02:57

It all comes down to the cost of hosting @ home vs hosting at their facility. Think of it in terms of redundancy and pricing.

Good Data centers will often provide

more than one Internet Service Provider, in case one fails or degrades performance
you get more bandwidth at a lower price
data centers have the proper amounts of cooling, "not residential cooling system"
good data centers will have 24/7 staff
will help you meet infrastructure demands that come with contracts
data centers are shaped to fit their purpose and reduce the chance of damage (broken water pipe flooding the office) caused by human events or natural ones
If it's a large provider with multiple data centers you can make a deal with them to host at their other locations, thus increasing geographical redundancy

Keep in mind that bad data centers also exist, they barely meet infrastructure demands and are run by incompetent staff.

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 01 '10 at 14:32

Redundancy and reliability.

Conditioned air and power. Usually redundant conditioned air and power.

Normally you will have multiple network providers and possibly peering arrangments. So the cost of connectivity will probably a lot lower than at a non data centre site. This means it is cheaper to get multiple network links for both redundancy and extra bandwidth and you are more likely to do so.

You will probably be able to provision extra network services faster should the need arise.

Data centres don't necessarily help you with scale, although obviously you can probably put more servers in a data centre than you can in a home or small commercial site.

Benefits of hosting servers at data centers?

3 Answers3