Data Center
Data center is a special building or room built to house a lot of running computer servers. It provides fast network connections between servers to communicate and process a lot of data, and some for talking to the outside world. There are cooling machines to deal with heat from each server and control moisture to stop computers from breaking too fast. There is often an emergency electricity supply from an UPS (or diesel generator) to make sure that computers still work even when mains power goes out. And there are usually some kind of fire extinguishers there to keep fire from computers if there happen to be any.
Data centers are normally built and used by companies that need a lot of always-on computer, companies that are hired to do computing for someone else (for example, ones that do web hosting), and most modern telecommunication companies.
Written for younger readers
Data Center, in simpler words
This version comes from Wikijunior, a set of books written for children aged 8 to 11. It is shorter and uses plainer language than the article above.
From Wikijunior: How Things Work
Data centers have existed since the early days of computing although they had a different name then. They were often called computer rooms.
It gets electricity from big wires that enter the data center and let the computers do their job.
A data center is just a big building full of very good computers. What the computers do depends on what the company that owns the data center does, but it is usually something to do with the internet, like storing all the words and photos on a website. The computers need lots of power to do this, sometimes as much as a small town!
The electricity in the data center can be very dangerous, as lots is needed to power the computers inside it. However, these cables are insulated, which means that they are wrapped in a layer of something that does not allow electricity through (known as an insulator), so that the electricity cannot get out and hurt anyone.
It contains hundreds or thousands of computers that can do everything from running a bank to streaming video.
It can remember lots of things about lots of people and places and other stuff, and it stores a lot of info.
Data centers run the Internet. Whenever you use Microsoft to challenge your friends on XBOX Live, you’re using a data center. The Wikimedia Foundation has databases in a data center to let you read this book.
Many businesses use a datacenter as their “Cloud” for servers and storage. The datacenter also has “Firewalls” as the first point of entry from an external computer, that allow or deny access to the devices behind them. These firewalls see millions of packets daily and their rules quickly determine access permissions. There are also devices like load balancers and switches in the datacenter that carry the load of all these communication packets. The load balancer site in front of several servers and spreads the load of the work among them.
We needed computers, cables, before we had data centers.
Where this page comes from
The article above is adapted from “Data Center” on Simple English Wikipedia, by its contributors. We removed reference markers, navigation boxes and tables, expanded measurement templates into readable numbers, and kept the prose otherwise intact. The simpler version is adapted from Wikijunior on Wikibooks.
Both sources are published under CC BY-SA 4.0, so this page is published under the same licence. You may share and adapt it, including commercially, as long as you credit the original and keep the same licence.
Worksheets, answer keys and printable layouts elsewhere on K5Print are our own work and are not covered by this licence.