Wondering exactly what data centers are? You're not alone. It's a common question and if you're not in the industry or are just starting out, information you find online about data centers and servers can seem like it's written in a different language.

Before you view the infographic, it's helpful to remember these key points:
<ol>
 	<li>Data centers house servers.</li>
 	<li>Servers collect, process, and store data so that it can be accessed remotely.</li>
 	<li>All data centers have 6 main components:</li>
</ol>
<ul>
 	<li>Storage</li>
 	<li>Recovery and backup</li>
 	<li>Power</li>
 	<li>Cooling</li>
 	<li>Physical protection</li>
 	<li>Security</li>
</ul>
Explaining data centers and what they do can be complex, but this infographic manages to take the information and make it easy to process. Check it out to learn about data centers, 'the brains of the operation.'
<h2 style="text-align: center;">What are data centers?</h2>
<img class="size-full wp-image-10384 aligncenter" src="https://itxdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/datacenters.png" alt="what are data centers? infographic" width="1000" height="3332" />

<em>Infographic sourced from <a href="http://www.coolinfographics.com/">Cool Infographics</a>.</em>
<h3>The data center layout</h3>
As you can see, every area and section of data centers has a specific purpose and importance. The air conditioning and cooling units are essential to keep the equipment from overheating. IT and security personnel must monitor the data center 24/7 to ensure nothing is compromised or threatened. An uninterruptable power supply (UPS) and backup generators are required to ensure there's never a total loss of power at the data center.
<h3>The data pathway</h3>
Visualizing the data pathway helps in understanding the way data travels from a data center to our computers. This infographic was especially helpful as it shows every step of the way. The data starts in the data centers, travels through the network cables to your Internet Service Provider, making its way to your modem, router, and finally, computer. You're able to access data remotely when it's stored in data centers because of this complex pathway.
<h3>Streaming video</h3>
We take advantage of streaming video all the time, but did you really know how it worked? It's pretty simple: You select a movie or show to start streaming on, say, Netflix. Your selection gets Netflix's servers to send a request to its media servers: This person wants to start streaming Chasing Monsters. The media server sends the video data to your device, and the data is buffered by the program or app you're playing it from.

It's called streaming because it plays as it's sent or streamed, not after the entire file is downloaded. That explains why poor connections result in loading and buffering pauses in your streaming shows.