Performance determines what happens—this principle also applies in information technology, whose developments now leave hardly any area of life untouched. Today, very little works without reliable, high-performance servers. Maximum reliability, minimal latency and as close to zero downtime as possible are crucial. Added to this is the need for robust security measures for the respective environments. But where is development heading, for example in server hardware?
Operating servers presents IT managers with a number of challenges. First, servers should be located in a place with suitable environmental conditions—humidity and cooling are often key considerations here. If hard drive capacity runs low, performance also declines. That is why disk utilisation must be continuously monitored. In addition, RAM has to deliver a lot—if it is no longer sufficient, this leads to an overall drop in performance. The same applies to the main processor: here too, continuous monitoring is required to prevent impending overloads in good time. This also helps avoid system crashes.
A wide range of measures is therefore required to reliably maintain server performance. Due to these diverse challenges, the trend is more than ever towards IT outsourcing, or using external data centres. In addition to guaranteed performance, colocation offers companies a number of other advantages, such as:
PCs are now also reaching ever higher performance levels and generally come with excellent specifications. Some decision-makers therefore consider whether a fleet of premium computers with the right components might be sufficient. This trend can be observed because in many companies an ageing server landscape is part of the norm. This creates the impression that high-performance PCs represent an immense upgrade to the existing situation.
However, this is short-sighted: especially in terms of longevity, this solution is clearly inferior. Fans, power supplies and boards in servers are designed around robustness and durability. With fans in particular, it is not about noise levels, but about their actual purpose. And in server rooms or data centres, the noise level simply does not matter—unlike in an open-plan office. The same applies to components such as processors or hard drives, which function very differently in servers than in PCs. There are also differences in the respective network cards. Decision-makers should therefore opt for a server landscape—ideally in a high-performance data centre.
In the world of servers, things rarely stand still. Due in part to the energy crisis, the relationship between power consumption and performance is increasingly coming into focus. At the same time, the volume of data generated is rising virtually by the second, which in turn leads to higher consumption. This is why edge computing has become a major trend. Alongside this, the growing importance of software as a service and cloud services is evident. The general shift to the cloud is also increasing.
Overall, it can be concluded that increasing efficiency in data centres is more in focus than ever—regulatory requirements such as the Energy Efficiency Act are also drivers here. Colocation data centres are therefore emerging as a sensible solution. They also offer a high-performance alternative for companies with particularly high data volumes: in the form of dedicated servers, whose capacities are available exclusively to a single company.
