Cisco Network Design Solutions for Small-Medium Businesses

Data Centers or Computer Rooms

Design considerations for the data centers or computer rooms and their contents include the following:

• Physical security of the facility

• Fire protection

• Adequate ventilation to dissipate the heat that is generated by the equipment that is stored there

• Power protection

• Disaster planning and recovery in the event that an unforeseen catastrophe should affect those critical locations

All these considerations facilitate the proper functioning and protection of what makes networks so indispensable to begin with: application servers and storage devices that accumulate more and more of the SMB's data. Data centers might house some network gear, like routers and switches, but primarily they house servers, extended storage, and ...