Several factors determine the type of datacentre design standards that a company would apply in their construction of data centers. Aside from geographical location, the standards such as business goals come into play. Therefore if the company aims to construct a number of data centers across the United States of America, the US standards will most likely apply. However, the next decision as to the type of data center to be implemented would involve what the overall growth strategy of the business is. Entrepreneurial data centers generally differ in purpose from government-run data centers, just as much as they differ from data centers operated by major internet behemoths. It is, therefore, a nuanced decision for the company to decide which type of data centers it would like to operate and in which location.
The most important part of the process will most likely be the documentation and implementation portion of the decision. Regardless of which data center design standards are selected, it is paramount to follow up each step of the process with robust documentation that reinforces the type of standard decided on, with the full support of all stakeholders involved. All deviations from the chosen standard must also be adequately documented and monitored using such tools as the Datacenter Infrastructure Management (DCIM) tool, the Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS), the Electrical Power Monitoring System (EPMS), and the Document Management System (DMS) for all operations and maintenance procedures.
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Datacenter infrastructure standards
The type of data center design standards that an organization would adopt is are determined by several factors. Chief among these is the organization's business mission. Organizational strategy and mission notwithstanding, certain standards exist that guide the location and structure of data centers. Considering that data centers are the locations where the company’s most important information and system resources are kept, they must be safe and accessible, as the bare minimum standard. Not only must the information in the data center be extremely difficult to access for unauthorized parties (safety), it must also be easy to access to authorized parties such as maintenance teams and system administrators (Gilly, 2017).
Although there is a set of best practices that generally apply to all data centers, certain specific best practices will apply for data centers serving different purposes like; colocation data centers, internet facilities, and enterprise data centers. These best practices are spread out across different criteria; operational standards, building codes, and design standards. Examples of codes required for the construction of data center infrastructure include; the NFPA codes, the New York State Energy Conservation Construction Code, green certification standards such as the LEED, and performance standards such as Uptime institute's Tier Standard.
Codes are the minimum regulatory requirements needed when designing, constructing, and operating a data center to ensure data efficiency, energy efficiency safety throughout the entirety of its existence. Therefore, the three most significant data center design standards known in the industry are the; Uptime Institute Tier Standard, the ANSI/BISCI 002-214, and the ANSI/TIA 942-A 2014.
Uptime Institute Tier Standard
This is a performance-based standard that provides a methodology for the design, construction, and commissioning of the data center. This standard focuses on the overall lifetime resiliency of the data center facility, depending on four prescribed Tiers of reliability or redundancy. The Uptime Institute Tier Standards were established as some of the first standards to successfully measure the overall reliability of data centers (Ascierto, 2018).
ANSI/BICSI 002-2014
The best practices covered under these standards consider the most significant areas of the planning stage, design and construction, and the commissioning and operationalization stage of the data center facility. Additional factors covered under this datacentre infrastructure design standard include; fire protection, maintenance, and IT standards. BICSI-trained professionals trained in this standard exist, who would take the client organization through the reliability classifications rated from 0 to 4.
ANSI/TIA 942-A 2014
This Telecommunication Infrastructure Standard for Data Centers is based on the Uptime Institute Tier Standard, with a clear bias towards IT cables and network systems. Although the same tier system is used as is used in the Uptime Institute Standard, they have recently renamed their tier system to a rating system. Therefore mechanical, architectural electrical, and telecommunications systems within the data center are Rated 1-4. Trained and dedicated vendors in this system are available to provide verification for data centers built by these standards.
For the organization in question, the type of data center infrastructure standard that it would adopt would heavily rely on the business and strategy goals of the organizations. Once this is established, then the documents at the disposal of the organization would determine the type of datacentre design standard to follow. In addition, the amount of capital available to the organization would also determine the types and number of certifications to pursue. The higher the number of certifications that need to be pursued, the higher the capital cost requirements for such a pursuit. It is, therefore, upon the particular company to decide at a leadership level, the company goals, the resources available, and the type and number of certifications that it would be willing to pursue.
Choice of the standard applied at the organization
The organization would be best placed to select the Uptime Institute Tier Standard as a design standard for its data centers. The Tiers in this standard define the level of requirement that the data center would require. Requirements, in this case, would include such factors as critical load distribution paths, redundant components, and cooling requirements. The Uptime Institute Tier System is a reliable and orderly way through which the organization's data centers might be categorized. This standard is also impressive in the sense that it has made public the considered standards and metrics behind the operation of each Tier. These metrics include; the redundant electrical path for power, cooling capacity, concurrent maintainability, and uptime guarantee.
Another benefit of this Uptime institute rating system is that it offers clear and efficient levels of IT certification. Thus one is able to clearly determine which class their data center would belong to. These IT certifications are; Approved Status and Activated Status. Data centers under the Approved Status certification mean that they have met all the previous Uptime Institute classifications and verifications. This approved status stays for two years, after which it expires, which means that the data center would have to be re-evaluated for another two-year accreditation status. The Activated Status data centers mean that the Institute is in recognition of a data center that is on an upward trajectory towards higher levels of service and efficiency. The Activated Status, unlike the Approved Status, lasts for one year, pending an evaluation that determines whether the data center maintains or degrades the standard.
The Tier system is arranged in such a manner that Tier 1 is the lowest level of sophistication, while Tier 4 data centers observe the highest level of service delivery. Tier 1 data centers provide the lowest levels of redundancies and may get to experience notable down-times. The level of sophistication at this Tier is rather low.
Tier 2 data centers have a higher level of sophistication than their previous counterparts. They are more robust than Tier 1 data centers, without the complicated performance hardware that is characteristic of Tier 1 data centers. For instance, it would not require dual power inputs and provides the customer with a balance between performance and cost management.
Tier 3 data centers might require dual power inputs. This level of data centers can perform repairs for their customer services with any notable disruption of customer service. Tier 3 data centers also provide additional ability for the backup operation, to such an extent that the client might not notice any downtimes. Although this level is highly tolerant of technological and network faults, an unplanned maintenance event might cause short disruptions to existing client organizations.
Tier 4 data centers are the most reliable and efficient, even able to perform repair and maintenance procedures without any notable disruptions to the service delivery to clients. Day to day activities and operations at the data center is able to continue, regardless of the extent of maintenance activities happening at the data center. The data flow to and from the data center does not ever stop, and the client does not ever notice or experience any downtime.
Benefits of the Uptime Institute Data Center Standards
These standards, aside from being the most modern, seem to enjoy the highest technological advantages as well as acceptable levels of reliability. It is also clear which Tier a potential client's data center would fall into, which makes it all the easier for any such client to budget for a data center that aligns with their overall business strategy and goals. It is arguable that Tier 4 data centers per the Uptime Institute Design Standards are the highest performance data centers available in the market today (Prudnikov, 2020). These enjoy the following advantages;
Tier 4 data centers experience no points of failure in their entire operational duration. No single outage or system error can shut down the Tier 4 system, owing to the numerous redundancies for every data protection stream and network processes.
Tier 4 data centers guarantee 99.995% of uptime throughout the year. This is the highest level of uptime available in the market, which ensures the client organization of a smooth operation throughout the entire year.
The infrastructure in Tier 4 data center is fully redundant. This includes the amount of infrastructure required for a smooth operation, then an additional set of infrastructure added for backup.
For a data center to qualify as Tier 4, it would have normally proven to have an independent power supply capable of running for a continuous 96 hours, independent of the main power grid. It is plausible that some Tier 4 data centers even have more than the required 96 hours of independent power run time. This means that clients may be assured of a smooth operational period, regardless of the length of a power outage happening.
Optimized efficiency at the Tier 4 data center. Countries that do not have high internet traffic and high international reach would not require a Tier 4 data center.
References
Ascierto, R. (2018). Uptime institute global data center survey . Technical report, Uptime Institute.
Gilly, L. (2017). Data centre design standards and best practices for public research high performance computing centres. Immobilienwirtschaft aktuell 2017: Beiträge zur immobilienwirtschaftlichen Forschung , 2017 , 173.
Prudnikov, A. (2020). Design of the data center.
