Uptime Institute has issued over 1,700 Tier Certifications in over 98 countries around the globe. Let’s have a look at the details of Uptime Institute Tier Certification.
Uptime Institute’s Tier Standard Certification is considered as an industry standard for design, construction, and ongoing operations. Uptime Institute has issued over 1,700 Tier Certifications in over 98 countries around the globe. Let’s have a look at the details of Uptime Institute Tier Certification.
What is Uptime Institute Tier Certification?
Uptime Institute’s Tier Standard is one of the globally most recognized standards for data center reliability and overall performance. Uptime Institute has developed the Tier Certification over 25 years ago. They defined the Tier Certification as a proven measure of data center infrastructure’s capability to meet the performance level business depends on.
Datacenter owners aim to reach a particular Tier level to verify their sufficiency in meeting business demands. As a global authority, Uptime Institute can rate and certify data centers’ design and facility using the standards from our Tier classification requirements. The Tier Gap Analysis Process can be applied to any existing or under-construction data center.
Over 1,700 Tier Certifications have been issued in over 98 countries around the globe. Uptime Institute’s Tier Standard Certification is considered as an industry standard for design, construction, and ongoing operations. Issued Tier certification shows that a data center has reached a higher level of performance. It also indicates worldwide recognition of data centers, by providing a mark of excellence unique to high-performing businesses.
Tier Gap analysis
Uptime Institute assesses the basis of design, electrical schematic diagrams, mechanical diagrams, equipment layout drawings and specifications, load calculations, control system design and operations, operational and architectural plans, as well as any other documents required to ensure that all aspects of the design meet the requirements of the Tier objective in the Tier Gap Analysis.
Benefits of certification
Tier Certification provides many benefits such as respect, guidance, risk avoidance, higher efficiency. In terms of respect, Tier certification shows that the data center meets rigorous standards and can support the needs of the company. This assessment also includes guidance on addressing weak spots, identifying strong points. The assessments can be used as a roadmap for making improvements and important business decisions. Regarding risk avoidance, Tier certification proves that an organization’s infrastructure is built to minimize risk.
What are the different tiers of data centers?
Uptime Institute’s Tier Standard is considered as the international standard for data center performance. It depends on each system’s needs. Data center Tier that explains the infrastructure required for data center operations uses methods for comparing the performance of one site infrastructure against another and aligning infrastructure investments to business goals. Therefore, Uptime Institute Tier Certification helps businesses during the decision process of a data center.
There are four Tier Standard of Uptime Institute (often displayed with Roman Numerals), regarding the criteria for maintenance, power, cooling, and fault capabilities. Data center infrastructure, operational sustainability, performance are the essential components of Uptime Institute’s Tier classification. Building codes, regional weather, security, and property usage are some of the other factors considered by data center owners. Tier 1 symbolizes the basic capacity level with infrastructure while Tier 4 means the most complex one.
What is a Tier 1 data center?
A Tier I data center is the basic capacity level with infrastructure to support IT. A data center can be issued Tier I certification if it has the requirements below:
- An uninterruptible power supply for power sags, outages, and spikes.
- An area for IT systems.
- Dedicated cooling equipment that runs outside office hours.
- An engine-generator for power outages.
Briefly, a Tier I data center has an area for IT systems, dedicated cooling equipment, an engine generator for power outages, as well as an uninterruptible power supply. Considering these requirements, human error can be evitable in Tier 1 data centers, but unexpected failure or outage cannot be handled. A Tier 1 data center has an expected uptime of 99.671%. This equals 28.8 hours of downtime annually.
What is a Tier 2 data center?
A Tier 2 data center offers better maintenance opportunities and safety against disruptions by providing engine generators, energy storage, chillers, cooling units, UPS modules, pumps, heat rejection equipment, fuel tanks, and cells. According to Uptime Institute’s criteria, the components can be removed without shutting it down. The unexpected shutdown will adverse a Tier II data center like a Tier 1 facility. It has an expected uptime of 99.741%. It equals 22 hours of downtime annually.
What is a Tier 3 data center?
A Tier III data center has multiple paths for power and cooling and systems as a key differentiator, with redundant distribution paths to serve the critical environment. What Tier 3 differ from Tier I and Tier II most significantly is that the data center does not require any shutdowns when equipment maintenance or replacement need arises. It has an expected uptime of 99.982% that means 1.6 hours of downtime annually.
What is a Tier 4 data center?
A Tier 4 data center is built to completely fault-tolerant and has redundancy for every component. These fault-tolerant facilities have an expected uptime of 99.995%. This means 26.3 minutes of downtime annually. A data center can be issued Tier 4 certification by providing several independent and physically isolated systems. Thanks to these separated components, a Tier IV data center can prevent an event from compromising both systems. Comparing to the Tier III topology, it has fault tolerance. This means that in case of interruption in the distribution path, IT operations will not be affected. Additionally, Tier IV data centers make the environment stable with continuous cooling.
Conclusion
A facility can be issued Tier certification depending on its infrastructure, design. Uptime Institute has been using Tier Gap Analysis as an assessment method for over 25 years. Issued Tier certification shows that a data center has reached a higher level of performance. It also indicates worldwide recognition of data centers, by providing a mark of excellence unique to high-performing businesses.
Source: cloud7.news