The Importance of International Fibre Connectivity

There are two critical things that every data centre in the world needs to operate successfully: power and connectivity—often referred to as power and fibre.

Connectivity provides the interconnection of information between end users and the compute/storage hosted in the facility. Let’s call that the data.

Power allows the compute/storage hosted in the facility to remain energized and cooled. Let’s call that the centre.

When we design a data centre, we ensure that there is an “N+1 redundancy,” which is resilience achieved by adding additional equipment to the architecture to support a failure or allow equipment to be serviced while the data centre is still operational. In the event of a power grid failure, standby generators are on-site to keep the data centre running without interruption.

The one thing that a data centre operator can’t control is the connectivity once it leaves the campus. This is why Hyperscalers insist on a minimum of three telecom service providers, using a minimum of three physical routes/points of entry to a data centre campus.