How we view a data center has changed with the introduction of new technologies and software development methods. We will begin with a recap of the characteristics of a fully self-managed data center and go on to explain how our views have changed over time:
Evolutionary changes in hardware, compute, and software architectures
It's worth noting that, in all the examples in this book, there is still an underlying data center that has to be managed, but now we're talking about shifting that responsibility of management. In the preceding diagram, each stream of evolution is not tightly linked. For example, monoliths can still be run on private or public clouds. In this section, we will cover the evolution of hardware over time and focus in on the following topics:
- The physical data center
- Colocating our gear
- Cloud born