In order to cope with the high volume of transactions and requests from users, we have to upgrade or replace the components of our network infrastructure from the front end to the back end. The most important thing is to identify the bottle neck of our network.
The capacities of the servers need to be upgraded regularly as our data is growing rapidly due to the emails and documents. As I mentioned in the last blog why our emails are eating up the server space, we need to upgrade the email servers nearly every year. Besides, we are now implementing a new document management system (DMS), in the similar fashion, the existing system is in-house developed that is no longer meeting our requirements. In the legal field or other professional fields, documents are the assets to the firms. More correctly, Knowledge management is tremendous to us. We are all now facing the problem of “Information Flooding” and are drown by the information. By the way, I would like to distinguish between “Data” and “Information”.
Whatis.com defines that ‘Information is stimuli that have meaning in some context for its receiver. When information is entered into and stored in a computer, it is generally referred to as data. After processing (such as formatting and printing), output data can again be perceived as information. When information is packaged or used for understanding or doing something, it is known as knowledge.’
Definitely, data, information and knowledge are interrelated. If we don’t have the good systems to convert our data to information and the tools to retrieve information, they will never be the knowledge we need. I always believe too much information is actually no information. With this in mind, we need to have powerful servers (i.e. high CPU speed and high capacity) to process and store our data. We are replacing the old servers with Rack Mount system that can stack up many servers and also, expanded the size of the data centre.
More powerful servers require more electricity supply and cooling control. Therefore, the power supply and the air conditioning system for the data centre were upgraded accordingly. Actually we should look into the design of the server itself. Researchers at Purdue University have demonstrated an ionic wind engine that promises to reduce the heat generated by semiconductors at a substantially faster rate that is possible with traditional cooling technologies. The logic behind is to activate the electrons and ions on the surface of the chips and the ions hit the air molecules and hence, increases the airflow which can cool the chip quicker (Lemon 2007). Details of this development has been published in the Sept. 1 issue of the Journal of Applied Physics. Anyway, I don't want to sidetrack you.
Currently, we are using multiple backup devices including magnetic tapes and optical disks. They just barely meet our needs and are still manageable. Penn (2007) in particular have reservations on optical technology despite ‘the recent claims of optical disk supremacy and the rapid rise from burnable CDs to DVD-Rs and onto Blu-ray and/or HD-DVD.’
Apart from that, everyday we used up a few backup tapes and optical disks and as time gone by we have accumulated a huge volume of them. Therefore, the metadata of tapes and disks are getting more and more important, which highly affects the recovery process. We all know that the recovery of data is very time consuming and never an easy task. However, we are usually required to fulfil the requests from users with a tight time frame. As a result, this is crucial to implement an effective backup and recovery solution with holistic view.
To be continued.
References
Hammond, S 2007, 'Metadata, data, and migration', Computerworld Hong Kong Daily, posted 1 August 2007, viewed 5 August 2007, <http://www.cw.com.hk/computerworldhk/TechWatch/Metadata-data-and-migration/ArticleStandard/Article/detail/447187>.
Lemon 2007, 'Researchers use ionic wind to keep chips cool', ComputerWorld Hong Kong Daily, viewed 19 August 2007, <http://www.cw.com.hk/computerworldhk/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=449851>.
Whatis.com 2005, ‘What is information', last updated 1 April 2005, Whatis.com, viewed 6 August 2007, <http://searchsqlserver.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid87_gci212343,00.html>.
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