Any network infrastructure forms a section of a much larger IT infrastructure of any organization. Typically, a network infrastructure is likely to contain the following:

• Networking devices: such as LAN Cards, modems, cables, and routers
• Networking software: such as firewalls, device drivers, and security applications
• Networking services: such as DSL, satellite, and wireless services.

The continuous improvements in the technologies underlying the network infrastructure have made sure that as a business owner, you keep your network infrastructure up to date with the latest trends. It is easy to see why network infrastructure plays such an important role in enterprise management and functioning. Big businesses must keep thousands of devices connected to maintain consistency across the whole enterprise. Having a strong backbone helps. This is where a good network infrastructure comes in.

Considering the innovations and advancements in this sector, let’s look at some of the important trends which will help you find out if your infrastructure is up-to-date, and if not, where work is required:

Cloud networking systems

First and foremost, the reliance of businesses with cloud systems is increasing over the years. So, to start with, you should make sure that you are using a cloud-based system for your network infrastructure. With both public and private cloud options available, big enterprises are looking to shift their operations onto the cloud for fast, reliable, and secure operations. Hybrid clouds, which mix the good bits of both public and private cloud networking systems, have also emerged as viable network infrastructure solutions for enterprises.

Security as the topmost priority

Enterprises are giving utmost importance to security, owing to the fact that data breaches and hacks have been on the rise. With new innovations in tech come new ways of hacking networks. To protect against these breaches, organizations are now beyond the traditional firewalls and security software, and are turning up the heat on any malicious hacker looking to take down their network. Security has now become by far the biggest motivator in improving network security these days.

A secure network infrastructure requires you to have properly configured routers that can help protect against a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack. Further, a keen eye must be kept on the Operating systems as they form the foundation to any layered security. If privileges within an OS are jeopardized, the network security can be compromised at large.

An increased importance to analytics

For a long time, network analytics tools have been pulling data from the network, but it seems that the tides are changing. Enterprises now use their own big data analytics tools to generate information on trends and are pushing data from the network infrastructure. Companies like Cisco and Juniper are providing telemetry from their networking infrastructure to local analytics systems, with Juniper using OpenNTI to analyze it. Is your network infrastructure in-sync with your data analytics tools? If no – you must consider doing that, you don’t want to be left behind while the world progresses.

SD-WAN

Software-defined wide area networks continue to be a hot trend in network infrastructure innovations. Although the concept of SDN hasn’t been as successful as first imagined, SD-WAN seems to be the exception to the rule. Perhaps it is the only good thing that’s come out of the SDN concept. SD-WAN is gaining wide acceptance due to the fact that it offers good riddance from complex routing policies, and allows us to go beyond the capabilities of normal routing policies. There are numerous vendors offering SD-WAN models for your infrastructure, and the cost for it varies from vendor to vendor. Ease of use is what drives enterprises towards SD-WAN.

If an enterprise incorporates the above-discussed network trends, it is likely that the Infrastructure is not only ready for today, but is also future-proof. To make sure your network infrastructure is always up-to-date, you need to keep up with the latest news, innovations, and trend changes in networking.

Every organization requires a Data Center, irrespective of their size or industry. A Data Center is traditionally a physical facility which companies use to store their information as well as other applications which are integral to their functioning. And while a Data Center is thought to be one thing, in reality, it is often composed of technical equipment depending on what requires to be stored – it can range from routers and security devices to storage systems and application delivery controllers. To keep all the hardware and software updated and running, a Data Center also requires a significant amount of infrastructure. These facilities can include ventilation and cooling systems, uninterruptible power supplies, backup generators, and more.

A cloud Data Center is significantly different from a traditional Data Center; there is nothing similar between these two computing systems other than the fact that they both store data. A cloud Data Center is not physically located in a particular organization’s office – it’s all online! When your data is stored on cloud servers, it automatically gets fragmented and duplicated across various locations for secure storage. In case there are any failures, your cloud services provider will make sure that there is a backup of your backup as well!

So how do these different modes of storage stack up against each other? Let’s compare them across four different metrics: Cost, Accessibility, Security and Scalability.

Cost

With a traditional Data Center, you will have to make various purchases, including the server hardware and the networking hardware. Not only is this a disadvantage in itself, you will also have to replace this hardware as it ages and gets outdated. Moreover, in addition to the cost of purchasing equipment, you will also need to hire staff to oversee its operations.

When you host your data on cloud servers, you are essentially using someone else’s hardware and infrastructure, so it saves up a lot of financial resources which might have been used up while setting up a traditional Data Center. In addition, it takes care of various miscellaneous factors relating to maintenance, thus helping you optimize your resources better.

Accessibility

A traditional Data Center allows you flexibility in terms of the equipment you choose, so you know exactly what software and hardware you are using. This facilitates later customizations since there is nobody else in the equation and you can make changes as you require.

With cloud hosting, accessibility may become an issue. If at any point you don’t have an Internet connection, then your remote data will become inaccessible, which might be a problem for some. However, realistically speaking, such instances of no Internet connectivity may be very few and far between, so this aspect shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Moreover, you might have to contact your cloud services provider if there’s a problem at the backend – but this too shouldn’t take very long to get resolved.

Security

Traditional Data Centers have to be protected the traditional way: you will have to hire security staff to ensure that your data is safe. An advantage here is that you will have total control over your data and equipment, which makes it safer to an extent. Only trusted people will be able to access your system.

Cloud hosting can, at least in theory, be more risky – because anyone with an internet connection can hack into your data. In reality, however, most cloud service providers leave no stone unturned to ensure the safety of your data. They employ experienced staff members to ascertain that all the required security measures are in place so that your data is always in safe hands.

Scalability

Building your own infrastructure from scratch takes a lot of input in both financial as well as human terms. Among other things, you will have to oversee your own maintenance as well as administration, and for this reason it takes a long time to get off the ground. Setting up a traditional Data Center is a costly affair. Further, If you wish to scale up your Data Center, you might need to shell out extra money, albeit unwillingly.

With cloud hosting, however, there are no upfront costs in terms of purchasing equipment, and this leads to savings which can later be used to scale up. Cloud service providers have many flexible plans to suit your requirements, and you can buy more storage as and when you are ready for it. You can also reduce the amount of storage you have, if that’s your requirement.

Can’t decide which one to go for?

There is no universal right choice. Your choice should depend on what your business is prepared to take on, what your exact budget is, and whether or not you have an IT staff available to handle a physical Data Center.

Consider a dedicated private cloud infrastructure services for your mission-critical workloads

To know more about GoInfinit Private
– Sify’s private cloud storage service that will be ready for application deployment in as little as 10 weeks…

The ever-increasing demand for the Data-Center and network virtualization has its ramifications on the Data Center interconnect (check out Cloud Cover). It has gained the attention of the service provider’s network architecture making them think in the direction of load-sharing and distributed workloads. It has also become a way to connect various Data Centers in the cloud using SDN to allocate resources as per the requirement, automatically.

There was a time when Data Center interconnect (DCI) used to be simple. But due to the many technological advances and the availability of various options, there is a lot of confusion in the market. First, let’s take a look at the Data Center interconnect market:

Intra-Connections-The intra Data Center interconnect refers to all the connections within the Data Center. They can be within one building, or between Data-Center buildings within the campus. The connections may be at a distance of meters to few kilometers.

Inter-Connections-These refer to the connections that are between the 10km-80km range. Undoubtedly, the connections may be far apart, but inter-Data Center connectivity market is focused within this range.

There are Data Centers situated to serve the entire continent and there are others focused in a specific metro area.

Case-Study (Online Retailer)

You are a global retailer, and you might have several thousand transactions running in a second. When the Data Center is far away, the data is more secure from the various natural disasters. But, then there is a challenge that comes with greater distance. The transactions that are in-flight may get lost due to latency.

So for online transactions, there is a local Data Center (primary Data-Center), and the other is a secondary Data Center that’s almost 80Km away. The benefits, in this case, are dual. First, your transactions will not be affected by the distance and the data is secure. Second, none of the transactions are lost due to latency. So in the worst case, only a small number of transactions might get affected or lost.

The traffic may be within Data-Centers, or between two Data-Centers for the load-balancing. Now the two important traffic categorization:

1. East-West Traffic: The traffic between Data-Centers is referred as East-West.
2. North-South: The traffic to the user is referred to North-South.

Which DCI Challenges Have To Be Overcome?

There are many challenges that have to be overcome. Let’s take a look at some of them.

Distance: The DCI applications vary greatly in size and scope in response to the Data Centers that may be dispersed across the globe or metro area or around a country. So it becomes critical to carry most of the bits farthest, but when the distance increases the latency increases as well. While choosing shortest route may minimize latency, bad equipment may also lead to latency.

Connection Capacity: The Data Centers store and deliver applications. The data sets that are coming in a Data-Center or leaving it may be very large. The range may vary from few hundred Gigabits to Terabits. To handle such large data, the equipment should offer reliable and high-capacity connections. It’ll make sure that they may quickly scale to address the spikes in traffic.

Data Security: Data Centers store a large amount of critical information. It demands that the Data Center connections are reliable, safe, and encrypted to avoid costly breaches and also data losses. While the security of stored data is crucial, what’s more, crucial is the security of in-flight data.

Automated Operations: As we know, manual operations may be labor-intensive, complicated, slow and may be error-prone as well. So it is very much imperative that complexity and lower speed of connection that arises out of manual operations may be minimized by moving towards automation. It shouldn’t take much time to establish a connection between Data-Centers and shouldn’t require on-going manual operations.

Rising Costs: When a large stream of data enters and leaves the Data-Center, it should be carried out in the most cost-efficient manner. If the Data Centers remain viable, the costs shouldn’t rise in the same way as the bandwidth. To take care of these issues, the solutions in high-speed networking should offer a solution that connects Data Centers at the lowest cost per bit.

Finally, Solution to Look Forward

Cloud cover is a solution that provides reliable and affordable connectivity to leverage your Data Center and cloud investments.
It offers

1. 45 Data Centers with a high capacity fiber
2. Zero latency access to AWS & Other CSPs

It is also carrier neutral with the presence of significant operators within the Data Center. The settlement comes at a low price that fits the budget of small to large scale businesses.

Our Cloud Cover connects 45 Data Centers, 6 belonging to Sify and 39 other Data Centers, on a high-speed network.