As the core infrastructure of financial institutions, data centers provide highly efficient and stable data processing and technical support for critical operations such as transactions, settlement, and risk management . With the increasing globalization and complexity of financial services, higher demands are placed on the reliability, performance, and security of data centers . Any service interruption or data loss could not only trigger significant trading losses but also lead to severe penalties from regulators . Therefore, financial institutions must comprehensively evaluate the following key factors when selecting a data center:
1. Reliability and Availability
Financial operations require exceptionally high standards for continuous data center operation. Institutions should prioritize data centers with high-level design standards and clear availability commitments, ideally with availability rates no lower than 99.995%, supported by comprehensive automatic failover mechanisms .
Disaster recovery capability is another core indicator for assessing data center reliability. Financial institutions should establish a disaster recovery architecture that includes local high availability and a “Two-Sites, Three-Centers” model (intra-city + remote) . For instance, a four-copy strategy employing “local active-active + intra-city replication + remote replication” can achieve a high level of business continuity protection .
2. Performance
A data center’s throughput performance directly impacts user experience. An increase of just 1 millisecond in storage read/write latency can escalate database processing delays to seconds, thereby extending the overall response time of upper-layer business applications by tens of seconds . Consequently, the data center must possess high-performance storage systems and low-latency network architecture.
Furthermore, scalability is crucial for supporting ongoing business growth. In the face of explosive growth in financial data volume and increasing real-time requirements, the data center must have flexible horizontal and vertical scaling capabilities to meet frequent data exchange and processing demands .
3. Security Standards
Physical security forms the foundation of the data center’s overall security system. Financial data centers should implement multi-layered protections, including access control systems, video surveillance, firewalls, intrusion detection, and data encryption, to ensure sensitive data is protected from unauthorized access or tampering .
Regarding cybersecurity, a reliable protection system is essential to maintain the stability of the global financial system. The data backup system should adhere to the “32110” principle: maintain 3 physically isolated copies, use 2 different storage media, keep at least 1 offline copy, store 1 copy in an isolated zone with anti-tamper protection, and ultimately achieve zero errors during recovery .
4. Technical Compatibility and Innovation Potential
Disaggregated storage and compute architecture has become a future trend. Designs based on shared storage pools and layered decoupling can more flexibly adapt to the rapid evolution of financial services . Additionally, the data center should support emerging technologies such as cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, and blockchain. For example, the Lakehouse architecture is emerging as a strategic focus for financial big data, helping institutions maximize data value .
5. Cost-Effectiveness
The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is a critical basis for data center selection. By centralizing data processing and sharing resources, financial institutions can effectively reduce operational costs and risks . Evaluations should consider not only initial construction investments but also long-term operational and maintenance costs.
Energy efficiency management is equally key. Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) is a core metric for measuring a data center’s energy utilization efficiency. High-quality data centers should optimize PUE through technology and design, reduce energy consumption, and align with sustainable development goals .
6. Operations, Maintenance, and Service Support
Intelligent operational capabilities are vital for improving efficiency. Facing complex storage environments, financial institutions need to achieve resource visibility, automated scheduling, and efficient maintenance to reduce labor costs and enhance system stability .
Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are essential guarantees for service quality. Financial institutions should choose data centers that provide clear SLAs, ensuring that various performance and support metrics are contractually defined to minimize business downtime .
With technological evolution, cloud computing and virtualization are becoming mainstream directions for financial data centers. A growing number of financial institutions are migrating services to cloud platforms to enhance resource utilization and business agility . In the future, data centers will transform from traditional cost centers into core platforms for value creation . The data center strategy of financial institutions will directly impact their competitiveness and risk resilience in the digital era.