#dataredundancy

In Texas, everything is larger, even the footprint of the IBM Cloud Network. The tenth data center for IBM Cloud, which supports its virtual private cloud (VPC) operations, opened its doors today in Dallas, Texas. The fourth availability zone in the Dallas, Texas, IBM Cloud area is DAL14, the most recent addition. It is an addition to the current configuration, which consists of one federal data center, two network points of presence (PoPs), and one single-zone region (SZR).

DAL14

DAL14, the fourth availability zone (AZ) in the Dallas, Texas, region, is the newest addition to IBM Cloud.

The new availability zone in IBM Cloud’s Dallas area, DAL14, provides companies with a number of important advantages:

Enhanced Resilience: By dispersing applications and services over several zones, users can create highly resilient architectures using the four availability zones (including DAL14). In the event that a failure occurs in any one zone, this lowers the chance of downtime.

Scalability: In order to accommodate traffic spikes and demand surges without sacrificing performance, IBM Cloud users can scale workloads across several availability zones, including DAL14.

Data Redundancy: By offering a second geographic location inside the same region, DAL14 improves the choices for data redundancy. Ensuring that data is replicated and kept in a safe, remote location is essential for applications that need disaster recovery.

Low Latency: Dallas-area users can now execute and store data closer to their consumers by integrating DAL14. This improves response times and lowers latency, particularly for applications that need to process data quickly and in real-time.

Support for Hybrid Clouds: DAL14 facilitates the use of IBM Cloud’s security and flexibility to enable businesses to integrate cloud resources with on-premises data centers.

Strict regulatory and compliance criteria are followed by IBM Cloud, and the new zone will continue to provide strong security standards with firewall protections, encryption, and other security measures.

With this expansion, IBM Cloud’s overall capabilities in North America are strengthened, offering organizations more alternatives and flexibility when developing and implementing their cloud infrastructures.

The facility is built to support the utilization of enterprise-grade cloud computing workloads, including generative AI, secret computing, large-scale in-memory databases, and high-volume online applications with fluctuating traffic peaks.

According to Jay Jubran, Director of IBM Cloud Product Management Infrastructure Services, “the new state-of-the-art DAL14 expansion zone is a testament to our VPC growth providing additional capacity for our clients in the Dallas region and a commitment to our delivery of advanced networking solutions.” “Our customers can expand their workloads in IBM Cloud with peace of mind when they invest in our data centers.”

Refresher on terminology: zones, regions, and IBM Cloud VPC

Built on an extremely secure and robust software-defined network (SDN), IBM Cloud VPC allows you to create separate private clouds for your business needs while still enjoying the adaptable advantages of a public cloud. You select the processing, storage, and networking resources you need, and IBM Cloud offers hyperscalability and optimal availability.

Let’s take a brief look at the fundamental ideas behind zones and regions as they relate to IBM Cloud VPC setups.

Region: An abstraction associated with the geographical area where a virtual private cloud (VPC) is installed is called a region. There are several zones, or separate fault domains, within each area. A VPC can cover more than one zone in the designated area.

Zones: A zone is a physical representation of a data center that houses network, compute, and storage resources as well as the associated power and cooling systems. It also offers services and applications. To reduce latency, enhance fault tolerance, and remove shared single points of failure, zones are segregated from one another. Applications and databases are intended to be highly available, fault tolerant, and scalable through the use of availability zones.Image credit to IBM

Dallas’s cloud industry has a bright future

The Texas data center market has been expanding, and it doesn’t seem like it will slow down any time soon, much like the number of businesses relocating to the state. The Dallas data center market is estimated by Moder Intelligence to be worth 419.64 MW this year, and over the next five years, it is expected to increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.7% to 941.92 MW.

The report’s market trends list COVID-19, the need for hyperscalability, the demand for hybrid clouds, and the growing acceptance of AI as some of the causes driving up cloud computing demand in Dallas.

As the amount of data generated in Dallas increases in sectors including government, financial services, telecom, and healthcare, IBM Cloud hopes to increase its networking presence in the region in response to customer and business partner requests.

DAL14’s solutions for IBM Cloud VPC

Additionally, the complete IBM Cloud VPC line will reside in DAL14. Every affordable choice is designed to meet specific needs for platform as a service (PaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS), and hybrid cloud, including x86 with 4th Gen Intel Xeon processing capability, VMware, SAP, and IBM Z.

For example, IBM Cloud Virtual Servers, a portfolio that includes recent news on using Intel Gaudi 3 AI accelerators, will be housed at the new multizone region (MZR) site. IBM Cloud Direct Link, IBM Cloud Block and File Storage, IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers for VPC, and other features will also be supported. With seven MZRs in all and eighteen availability zones constructed to specification for fast access, low latency, low cost migration, and certified security, the complete range is global in scope.

Resiliency, performance, security, and compliance are at the heart of IBM Cloud’s commitment to supporting clients and enterprises who are expanding their operations to Dallas and other metro areas in the greater southwest region.

For hardware RAID, all drives are connected to a hardware RAID controller, which can be located on a separate RAID card, on a different server or built into the motherboard. The hardware RAID controller manages the RAID array, configures and supports multiple RAID levels. It contains a microprocessor (often called an I/O processor, or ROC ‘RAID on Chip’). In some cases, RAID controllers with their own processors can act as mini-computers because they have the ability to perform tasks independently. During the hardware RAID installation process, the drive is connected to the RAID controller board. This applies not only to large servers, but also to desktop computers. Processing hardware RAID refers to discrete controllers at the disk storage system level (such as ATA RAID, SATA, DELTA PLC, etc.).

PROS： Will not occupy or affect the performance of the computer or server; Compatible with different operating systems; Prevent data damage due to power outage during the backup process; It is easy to replace a failed disk.

CONS: The cost is higher than software RAID; If your RAID controller fails, you must find a compatible RAID controller to be replaced.