A state-of-the-art cloud infrastructure – what does it actually look like? This article gives you an exclusive look behind the scenes during a visit to one of the Cheops data centres.
Companies that work through the cloud don't want to leave anything to chance. The cloud offers major benefits, but since this means the productivity and customer service depend on the connection to an external IT infrastructure, this link must always be available. So as an entrepreneur you can expect your cloud partner's data centre to use all means to keep your important data and applications continuously up and running.
Everything redundant
That is exactly what happens in the Cheops data centre. There are impressive systems for cooling, back-up power supplies and giant batteries that are being charged continuously. In order to provide the data centres with electricity in the event of a power failure, there are various power generators on standby with a fuel tank that lasts 48 hours. Strict arrangements are in place for two fuel oil providers to drive to the centre before that time elapses. To eliminate all risks, they even come via different routes. Fire hazards have of course also been taken into account: an automated fire-extinguishing system covers every square metre and works with a special gas so that the servers cannot be damaged by the extinguishing agent. Thanks to all these redundancy provisions, the entire infrastructure of the data centre has a guaranteed uptime of no less than 99.99%.
A second data centre as a fallback solution
This way Cheops Cloud customers don't have to worry about the availability of the infrastructure or the servers. Cheops also takes full responsibility for the capacity, security and management. The data centre is not only redundant internally but also linked to a second data centre at a different location, which takes over everything in the event of an emergency.
Companies can therefore place their entire IT environment in the Cheops Cloud, or just part of it. In the latter case, Cheops creates a hybrid cloud with connections to local systems and to the public cloud such as Microsoft Azure. In addition, companies also have the option of only using the Cheops Cloud as a fallback solution for their own data centre in the event of a disaster. In this case, they buy disaster recovery as a cloud service (DRaaS), with all the benefits that the Cheops Cloud offers in terms of management, availability and security.