Resilient, Efficient, Secure—Designed as a System
Your on-prem data center (DC) is the beating heart of low-latency apps, regulated workloads, and edge/OT integrations.
SolveForce plans, builds, and operates DCs as a complete system—power, cooling, racks, cabling, network, storage, security, continuity, and observability—wired to evidence your teams and auditors can trust.
Related hubs: 🖧 Fabric → /networks-and-data-centers • 🏢 Colo → /colocation • ☁️ Cloud → /cloud
🔗 On-ramps → /direct-connect • 🌈 Optical → /wavelength / /lit-fiber / /dark-fiber
🎯 Outcomes (Why SolveForce for On-Prem DC)
- High-availability by design — A/B power, redundant cooling, dual fabrics, diverse routes.
- Deterministic low latency — leaf/spine cores, optical paths, storage fabrics tuned for µs/ms budgets.
- Security & compliance — physical + logical Zero Trust with immutable evidence.
- Operational clarity — DCIM, SLO dashboards, runbooks, and clean handoffs to NOC/SecOps.
- Cloud-ready — private on-ramps, hybrid DR, and workload portability.
🧭 Scope (What We Build & Operate)
- Power & Cooling — utility feeds, UPS (double-conversion), gensets, battery autonomy, CRAH/CRAC, hot/cold-aisle, liquid/immersion where needed.
- Racks & Distribution — cabinets/cages, PDUs (metered/switched A/B), busways, cable managers. → /racks-pdu
- Structured Cabling — SMF/MMF, Cat6A, MPO/MTP trunks, OTDR certification. → /structured-cabling
- Network Fabric — leaf/spine, 10/25/40/100/400G, EVPN/VXLAN, MACsec/L1 encryption options. → /networks-and-data-centers
- Storage & Compute — SAN/NVMe (FC/NVMe-TCP), virtualization, bare-metal & GPU clusters. → /san • /bare-metal-gpu
- Security — physical (mantraps, CCTV), NAC/802.1X, microsegmentation, ZTNA/SASE for admins. → /nac • /microsegmentation • /ztna • /sase
- Continuity — backups, immutability, DR tiers, failover runbooks. → /cloud-backup • /backup-immutability • /draas
- Observability — DCIM, environmental sensors, nets/links, storage & compute telemetry → NOC/SIEM. → /noc • /siem-soar
🧱 Building Blocks (Spelled Out)
- Power: dual utility (where available) → dual UPS (N, N+1, 2N) → generator → A/B PDUs to every rack; load steps tested with load banks.
- Cooling: hot/cold-aisle, containment, economizers, liquid cooling for dense GPUs; thermal maps & alarms.
- Fire: VESDA + clean agent (FM-200/Novec 1230); zoned; documented discharge procedures.
- Fabric: EVPN/VXLAN leaf/spine, Anycast gateways, QoS lanes; out-of-band mgmt network.
- Optical: wavelength or dark fiber for DCI; route diversity & OTDR baselines archived. → /wavelength • /dark-fiber
- Security: RBAC, PAM for elevation, vault-managed secrets, HSM/KMS for keys, WAF/Bot at app edges. → /pam • /secrets-management • /key-management • /waf
🏗️ Design Patterns (Choose Your Fit)
A) Enterprise DC (General Purpose)
Redundant leaf/spine, SAN/NVMe tiers, virtualization + K8s, backup to object store with Object-Lock, DR to second site/cloud.
B) AI/HPC Pod in DC
High-density racks, liquid cooling, IB/RoCE fabrics, NVMe scratch + parallel FS, optical DCI; power/thermal SLOs for training windows. → /bare-metal-gpu
C) Regulated Enclave (PCI/HIPAA/CJIS/CMMC)
Physical cage, VRF + microseg, MACsec/IPsec, HSM keys, immutable logs & backups; ZTNA for admins; evidence packs. → /cybersecurity
D) Edge/Micro-DC
Short racks with rugged power/cooling, SD-WAN, ZTNA for ops, local compute + cache; backhaul over wavelength/fixed wireless. → /sd-wan • /fixed-wireless
E) Hybrid Hub (Cloud On-Ramp)
DC as meet-point: Direct Connect/ExpressRoute/Interconnect, BGP policy, Anycast services; WAF/Bot at perimeter. → /direct-connect
📐 SLO Guardrails (Targets You Can Measure)
| SLO / KPI | Target (Recommended) |
|---|---|
| Power availability (A/B) | ≥ 99.99% rack-level |
| Cooling delta (inlet temp p95) | Within ASHRAE envelopes |
| PUE (annualized) | ≤ 1.3–1.6 (site/region dependent) |
| Leaf↔Leaf latency (p95) | ≤ 10–50 µs (in-DC) |
| DC↔DC latency (metro, one-way) | ≤ 1–2 ms via wave/EPL |
| SAN latency (p95) | ≤ 300–800 µs (FC/NVMe/FC) |
| Change success rate | ≥ 99% (staged rings + rollback) |
| Evidence completeness | 100% (as-builts, baselines, tests) |
SLO breaches open tickets and trigger SOAR (reroute, spread load, raise capacity, rollback). → /siem-soar
🔒 Security & Compliance (Zero-Trust, Physical + Logical)
- Physical: mantraps, badges + biometrics, visitor logs, escorted access, camera retention.
- Logical: 802.1X/NAC on ports, ZTNA for consoles, microseg for east-west, PAM for admin flows, immutable logs.
- Crypto: TLS/mTLS/IPsec/MACsec/L1 as required; CMK/HSM, dual-control, KMIP. → /encryption • /key-management
- Data: DLP labels, tokenization, lawful residency; WAF/Bot & DDoS at boundary. → /dlp • /ddos
📊 Observability, DCIM & NOC
- DCIM: power, temps, humidity, door sensors, leak detection, camera states.
- Fabric: latency/jitter/loss, FEC/BER, light levels, buffer utilization, drops.
- Compute/Storage: CPU/GPU, memory, IOPS/latency, queue depth.
- Runbooks: alarm thresholds, escalation, maintenance windows; monthly SLA and capacity reports.
→ /noc • /circuit-monitoring • /siem-soar
💵 Commercials (What Drives Cost)
- Power density (kW/rack), redundancy tier, liquid vs air cooling, optics/fiber, racks/PDUs/cabling, security layers, DCIM, managed ops.
- Cross-connects, on-ramp ports, wavelength circuits, spares & maintenance, generator fuel contracts.
🛠️ Implementation Blueprint (No-Surprise Rollout)
1) Requirements — latency/throughput, kW/rack, growth, compliance.
2) Power & Cooling — A/B design, UPS/gensets, containment, liquid cooling plan.
3) Racks & Cabling — RU plan, PDU metering, trunk paths; label & OTDR certify.
4) Fabric & Storage — leaf/spine EVPN/VXLAN, SAN/NVMe tiers; QoS and jumbo MTUs.
5) Security — physical + logical Zero Trust; vault, HSM, WAF/Bot; logging to SIEM.
6) Continuity — Object-Lock backups, DR tiers, clean-point catalog; failover drills.
7) On-ramps — colo peering, DC↔cloud paths, BGP policy & Anycast.
8) Baselines — load-bank, thermal, OTDR, RFC 2544/Y.1564, SAN perf; as-builts archived.
9) Operate — DCIM/NOC dashboards, capacity planning, patch/firmware windows, quarterly reviews.
✅ Pre-Engagement Checklist
- 🔌 Power: target kW/rack, autonomy, generator run time; redundancy tier.
- ❄️ Cooling: density, containment, liquid requirements, thermal limits.
- 🧰 Racks/PDUs: counts, RU plan, metering, busway vs whip.
- 🧵 Cabling: SMF/MMF/Cat6A specs, trunk counts, labeling standard.
- 🖧 Network: speeds, EVPN/VXLAN, MACsec/L1 needs, DCI routes.
- 💾 Storage/Compute: SAN tiers, GPU/AI plans, virtualization/K8s footprint. → /kubernetes
- 🔐 Security: NAC/802.1X, microseg, ZTNA/SASE, PAM, vault, HSM.
- 💾 Backup/DR: RPO/RTO tiers, Object-Lock scope, DR sites/cloud.
- 🌐 On-ramps: Direct Connect/ExpressRoute/Interconnect, cross-connects.
- 📊 SIEM/NOC: dashboard set, reporting cadence, escalation matrix.
- 💰 Budget guardrails; managed vs co-managed operations.
🔄 Where On-Prem DC Fits (Recursive View)
1) Grammar — compute/storage ride Networks & Data Centers & Connectivity.
2) Syntax — composes with Cloud and Colo for hybrid/DR.
3) Semantics — Cybersecurity preserves truth (identity, crypto, segmentation, evidence).
4) Pragmatics — SolveForce AI predicts risk/capacity/thermal envelopes and suggests safe changes.
5) Foundation — consistent terms via Primacy of Language.
6) Map — indexed in the SolveForce Codex & Knowledge Hub.
📞 Build an On-Prem DC That’s Fast, Secure & Auditable
Related pages:
/networks-and-data-centers • /colocation • /cloud • /direct-connect • /wavelength • /lit-fiber • /dark-fiber • /san • /bare-metal-gpu • /noc • /siem-soar • /cybersecurity • /backup-immutability • /draas • /knowledge-hub