Data Centres and Email, what’s the connection?

January 31, 2013
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Tech Report
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Ever wondered how your email is sent? It all begins when you press send.

Your data device is connected to the internet via your gateway router to your Internet Service Provider. Once your message leaves your Internet Service Provider (ISP), it enters an Internet backbone router. This is where Google or Yahoo etc. picks up your message and guides it to the closest data center. To provide the best possible user experience, Google for instance tries to pick up your requests as early as possible from the local ISP, so they have built an extensive Internet backbone across the U.S.

There is a paramount need to secure your personal data. Data in your message is protected with a wide range of security measures. Security cameras, iris scans and fingerprint scans are installed at the centers and these are just a few of the measures that are taken to secure and protect your information. There are three areas of focus in the security of the data centre, namely physical security; protection of the data and reliability of operations.

Companies like Google run some of the greenest data centers in the world. In fact, Google were the first major Internet services company to gain external certification of their high environmental standards. One way they save energy is by keeping the temperature on their server floors at a warm 26.7 degrees Celsius, thus saving thousands of dollars in air conditioning costs. That means they don’t need as much energy-intensive air-conditioning, and their employees get to wear shorts to work.

Data centre energy efficiency best practices are:

1. Measure Power Usage Effectiveness

2. Manage Air Flow

3. Adjust Thermostat

4. Utilise Free Cooling

5. Optimise Power Distribution

Temperature monitors and airflow simulations are used to design highly efficient networking rooms. One of the ways to keep the cold areas cold and the hot areas hot is by using plastic curtains similar to those used in a commercial refrigerator.

When your email reaches the data center, it needs some guidance on where to go next. The networking room sends your message on its way, directing it to the servers that handle Gmail.

Your message then enters the server floor. Servers support many products at a time — that’s “the cloud.” It means Google can do more with less — more searches and more Gmail with fewer servers and less energy. In fact, Google data centers are some of the most efficient in the world, using 50% less energy than typical data centers. Their large scale also helps them better serve their customers by backing up data in multiple places and letting businesses easily increase their storage and speed.

Servers work together to process your data, including duplicating your message to create backups, scanning it for viruses, and filtering for spam. To cool the equipment doing all this work, energy-saving methods inspired by the natural environment around. Google also custom-build all of the servers so they are 93% efficient.

And there you have it! Now you know how email travels to help you keep in touch. You also know more about the innovative ways data centers protect your information and conserve energy. It takes seconds the email seconds to be routed to its final destination and happens billions of times a day.

Techteledata is building 6000m2 data centres each in Mtunzini and Yzerfontein. These data centres will be built following the Google data centre design.
The data centres and the undersea cable from Mtunzini, East London, Port Elizabeth and terminating in Cape Town will go live in April/May 2015.

Feature image: Courtesy of Google

Research content: Courtesy of Google