In recent years, data center technology has developed rapidly, and the forms of data center existence are gradually diversified, the traditional closed data center technology architecture is backward, resource deployment capacity is low, the management and development of the uncoordinated, the average utilization rate of the resources is only 20% to 30%, these data centers are difficult to keep pace with technological progress. At present, the total number of data centers in China has exceeded 640,000, but the utilization rate is actually low. As people pay attention to building green data centers, more and more forms of data centers will exist in order to achieve the purpose of saving energy and providing data center operational efficiency.

Currently, there are three main ways for data centers to exist: one is for enterprises to build their own data centers, the second is to rent data centers from carriers, and the third is to rent services provided by data centers. Self-built data centers are the traditional data center form of existence, rented operator data centers are gradually popularized with the development of Internet companies, with the emergence of AliCloud, CenturyLink data centers, telecom cloud, etc., the form of directly rented data center services began to emerge.

Enterprises build their own data centers

Many large enterprises have their own data centers, and then by leasing the operator's WAN lines, to achieve the interconnection of multiple internal data centers. For example: military network, public security network, peace of mind project, the banking industry, the oil industry, etc., these dedicated network using a proprietary data center, led by the major government departments, enterprises to create their own. This kind of data center has a large investment, high construction costs, closed, dedicated to a single enterprise or department to provide services. Since the construction of data centers requires the application for industrial building land, the consent of the power supply department and the construction department, the procedures are very cumbersome. Moreover, it often takes several years to put it into use after completion, with a long construction cycle. This kind of data center is especially suitable for "high wealth" industries that do not lack money, and it lacks advantages more and more in the era of fierce competition. In the U.S., some data centers have been forced to shut down, strict control of the approval of new data centers, a large number of data centers consume a lot of electricity in the U.S., bringing a heavy burden to the country. China is now in the development stage of rapid construction of data centers, the problem of energy consumption has begun to appear, as people pay attention to energy saving and environmental protection, the way to build their own data centers will be more difficult. However, this kind of self-built data center, because it is completely self-built, the use of very flexible, according to their own needs to change, high flexibility, especially this kind of self-built data center has the highest degree of security, information leakage, the possibility of being attacked by the greatly reduced.

Rent operator data center

The Internet has developed rapidly over the years, and now people's lives are completely inseparable from the Internet, the expansion of Internet companies is also fast, the cycle of self-built data centers is too long, it is obviously difficult to meet. Therefore, directly renting the operator's data center room is the main form of its data center existence. Whether it is Baidu, Qihoo 360, or Sohu, Sina and so on, most of the enterprises' data centers are rented from operators. Operators to provide sites, cabinets, network bandwidth and power supply, Internet companies directly into the operator's network equipment can be, so that generally as long as a week to complete the construction of a data center and put it into use, the speed is very fast, this approach is very common in the Internet companies, so that Internet companies only need to pay attention to their own application equipment (mainly network equipment and servers) running status can not have to be concerned about the server room environment, air conditioning, power supply, and so on. They don't have to care about the environment of the server room, air conditioning, power supply and a series of other issues. Although they have to pay a considerable amount of money to the operator for leasing, they can still save a lot of labor and material resources for Internet enterprises. According to the actual situation of their business, Internet enterprises can rent data center rooms in all levels of provinces and cities of the operators to rapidly deploy their business. Of course, there are still some restrictions on the use of the operator's three-quarter of an acre of land, such as the maintenance of the server room environment, equipment access management are subject to the restrictions of the operator. Lease term and new server room area have to be communicated with the operator, and the operator's consent is required before implementation. In order to develop well, these Internet companies need to have a good relationship with these carriers.

Tencent and Taobao have already started to build some of their own data centers, which require not only a lot of financial support, but also the support of the government, so they can't just build them on their own.

Services provided by rented data centers

This is a new type of data center that has emerged only in the last two years, provided by large data centers, and is a boon for small and medium-sized enterprises. SMBs are limited by capital and background, and it is difficult for them to build and rent operators to maintain their own data centers. By directly renting the services of a large data center, they can deploy their own business. For example, according to their business needs, they can rent 100GT hard disk and 200G memory, 10G bandwidth from AliCloud, for small and medium-sized enterprises, to meet the performance of these physical hardware is completely invisible. In this way, enterprise users can focus entirely on their own applications, do not have to care about the implementation of the underlying data center, but also for the enterprise to save manpower. Of course, this form makes the stability of the enterprise's core business and the stability of the rented data center operation of the relationship between the larger, and sometimes there are failures, due to the enterprise can not see the underlying implementation of the data center, can only wait for the recovery of business. Sometimes there are also cases of shirking responsibilities, and since the renter is in a technologically weak position, it is often difficult to get compensation for the losses caused by the failure. This approach also has a fatal weakness, which is security. Except for the upper layer application, the bottom layer implementation of data center is not under your control, and there is no means to be attacked, so the security totally depends on the rented data center. Therefore, when choosing to rent data center services, the security of the data center should be fully considered. Nowadays, there are only a few data center application service providers, and competition is still insufficient, which gives SMEs fewer choices. With the intensification of competition and the entry of international giants, such as Amazon and Microsoft are ready to build data centers in China and provide data center services to the outside world, this unequal status will be alleviated by then.

Whether you build or rent, there are pros and cons, and it's hard to say which is better. Rented data center services represent the future direction of data centers and have more potential for growth, while traditional self-built data centers, although controversial, will continue to exist for a long time, and large enterprises and government departments are still happy to build fully self-managed data centers. These three approaches are bound to be around for a long time to come.