“How it works”: Tier data center classification
In June of this year, several important events in the data center industry were announced. For a start, it became known that a permit was received to build the first national data center of the Tier IV category in the Republic of Bangladesh and the only one of its kind in Asia. Following this, the Japanese tech giant Fujitsu announced a global modernization of its Australian data centers - also to the level of Tier IV. The latest news gave ground for thinking about the evolution of data centers and the essence of their classification, which we will talk about today.
/ photo Arthur Caranta CC
Customers of data center operators have always had certain expectations and requirements for the infrastructure provided. Basically it was about reliability and security - the most significant indicators when choosing a data center. A milestone in the development of standardization was the unification of like-minded people into the group Uninterruptible Uptime Users Group (UUUG) in 1989. According to Edward Rafter, an engineer who designed data centers at an early stage of industry development in the United States, this event marked a turning point in the exchange of experience and was the first impulse to assess the infrastructure of data centers.
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In 1993, the organization of the Uptime Institute, with the help of an association of companies responsible for servicing the most important data centers in America, created a base for the exchange of experience. On its basis, methods for evaluating the effectiveness of data processing centers have been developed. The aspects that influence business decision making were analyzed: about 30 performance factors related to location, environmental impact and quality of service, and 16 technical subsystems. The Uptime Institute focused on the latter when developing the classification. It was framed in the 1990s as a standardized methodology.
Uptime Institute has the rights to certify data centers in accordance with the Tier-system in the design, construction and operation of infrastructure worldwide. Data centers in Russia are developed in accordance with the requirements of the TIA-942 standard of the Data Transmission Equipment Manufacturers Association (TIA) of the Institute of American National Standards. TIA requirements cover the areas of construction, power supply, cooling, security control, redundancy, maintainability and commissioning.
Uptime Institute and internal GOSTs are used in Russia as additions to TIA standards. It is important that the TIA-942, introduced in 2005, in turn, is based on the Uptime Institute standard. Moreover, an agreement was reached between the Uptime Institute and TIA, as a result of which the Association refused to use the term Tier in its methodology. Now it is fully connected with the activities of the Uptime Institute.
If we talk about the differences between the two approaches, it is worth noting that the Uptime Institute system does not seek to provide a tough technical specification of how to design and build data centers. The TIA standard, by contrast, dictates specific resource and accessibility requirements for each level. Unlike the Uptime Institute, TIA does not have the authority to conduct a formal data center assessment procedure. There is also no group of appraisers monitoring compliance with standards. However, the specific requirements for each level are publicly available and there is no fee for their use. In contrast, the Uptime Institute conducts paid data center certification.
There are four levels of the Uptime Institute standard:
Each next level of certification includes requirements for all previous levels.
The first-level data center provides a dedicated infrastructure to support IT systems outside the office, an uninterruptible power supply for filtering voltage surges and handling short-term outages, special cooling equipment that continues to operate at the end of the day, a generator to protect systems from prolonged power outages .
Second-tier data centers include redundant capabilities for critical components in order to provide repair and increase protection of IT-processes from failures. Redundant systems include power and cooling equipment, such as uninterruptible power supplies, chillers or pumps, and generators.
The Tier III data center does not require the shutdown of hardware to replace hardware and maintenance. A backup power and cooling channel is added to the components so that each element necessary to support the IT system can be turned off, and this does not affect the operation.
In addition to all the features of the previous level, data centers of Tier IV are characterized by increased (even greater than that of Tier III) fault tolerance, that is, failures of individual elements or interruptions of the backup channel do not affect IT operations.
It is believed that the expected level of uptime of the Tier I data center is 99.671% (1729 minutes of annual downtime); Tier 2 - 99.741% (1361 minutes of annual downtime); Tier III - 99.982% (95 minutes of annual downtime); Tier IV - 99.995% (26 minutes of annual downtime).
Uptime Institute accepts applications from data center operators for independent assessment of infrastructure. This is a voluntary procedure that not all companies resort to. At the same time, based on the basic idea of classification, transparency in the choice of data center is a blessing for customers. Therefore, starting in 2015, the Uptime Institute began to encourage operators to undergo certification.
The organization announced a new parameter for assessing data centers - energy efficiency. Two levels of compliance are offered: “approved” and “activated”. The evaluation result, according to the Uptime Institute, demonstrates the company's best practices in the industry. The proven energy efficiency of the data center is an additional argument for customers to choose.
In general, the classification is important for the client, as it acts as a guarantee of meeting the expectations of the final result in the issue of uptime and performance. Joe Hertvik, head of Hertvik Business Services consulting company, defines several scenarios for using a rating system:
The set of subsystems on which the Uptime Institute focuses its attention suggests that the infrastructure assessment allows you to make informed decisions when choosing data centers and to form adequate expectations.
There is a common misconception : the level of quality of data center services increases with each Tier. In fact, the classification of data centers is not aimed at determining the best type of data centers. Each Tier is designed to meet diverse business needs and performance requirements. Different businesses need a different infrastructure, and for most organizations, hosting Tier IV is simply inefficient.
In 2013, the Data Center Dynamics portal surveyed a group of experts to find out whether it was worth overpaying for the transition to a higher Tier. Raul Shewale, a consultant at Capgemini, and Dr. Carlos Garcia de la Noceda agreed that the Tier III data center could have a more robust infrastructure and be more cost effective than Tier Iv. And William Angle (William Angle), director of CS Technology, who participated in the creation of the first Tier IV facility in the world, believes that almost 60% of all failures are due to people, and not because of infrastructure - therefore it does not always make sense to turn to maximum configurations.
Uptime Institute employees also report that the cost of data center infrastructure and operational complexity increase from level to level, and owners should choose a Tier that best suits the needs of a particular business.
“Tier IV is not always a“ better ”Tier II solution. The infrastructure of the data processing center should correspond to commercial use, otherwise companies can invest excessively large capital or take on too much risk, ”the organization’s website says .
If you recall the latest news, you can see that the desire of Bangladesh and Fujitsu to Tier IV data centers is due to climatic and seismic situations, but not the best characteristics of these data centers in comparison with others. The Bangladesh authorities announced the construction of a mega-data center as far back as 2014, and at the same time information appeared about the choice of an earthquake-prone area for these purposes.
Uptime Insitute representatives said that earthquake risks are not taken into account in Tier certification, however, according to Gary Wong from telecommunications company Instor Solutions, the seismic isolation method is taken into account by Uptime Insitute for awarding Tier IV in seismically hazardous areas. Regarding the update of the status of Fujitsu data centers in Australia, it was caused by a lightning strike in 2015, said Fujitsu executive director in Australia and New Zealand, Mike Foster.
In practice, it turns out that the capabilities of Tier I and Tier II data centers are usually sufficient for enterprises that can cope with occasional server downtime during off-hours. For companies whose business operates 24 hours a day around the world, or for companies where any downtime will adversely affect operations, an investment in Tier III or Tier IV can be worth it.
In other words, Tier I is suitable for small enterprises, in which the IT infrastructure only expands internal business processes and is not the main tool. Tier II will be sufficient for small businesses whose IT requests are mostly limited to traditional business hours and allow you to turn off the system during off-hours. Large enterprises with obligations for round-the-clock customer service and business process automation, operating in areas where quality of service is a competitive advantage, can choose between Tier III and Tier IV. However, protection against downtime in the case of Tier III is sufficient in most situations.
For example, in IT-GRAD we chose to host part of our distributed infrastructure of the SDN data center in St. Petersburg, which is a data center of Tier III level. This is enough to provide popular IT services, ranging from co-location to rental of IaaS-cloud, certified in accordance with the requirements of the PCI DSS standard .
To ensure proper reliability, SDN uses solutions such as dynamic uninterruptible power supplies, its own distribution substation, modular structure, and cooling by KyotoCooling BV units based on rotary heat exchange. Data center security is provided by multi-level protection with multiple perimeters.
Support for temperature and humidity conditions in SDN
In Moscow, we chose one of the largest DataSpace Moscow data centers as a cloud platform, containing 12 computer halls for 1,000 racks. DataSpace also went through the full Tier III Gold certification cycle according to the standards of the Uptime Institute, with full redundancy of engineering systems and ensuring a high level of availability with the ability to perform both routine and maintenance work without interrupting IT and business processes. Colocation services are provided on the basis of the Service Level Agreement (SLA), according to the terms of which we obtain 100% availability of equipment, applications and data, which is higher than the Tier III Facility certification standard
Thus, in the discussion about the best Tier, there is no universal answer - Tier IV is not a “silver bullet” and is only suitable for a limited type of organization. When choosing the level of the company's data center, first of all, it is necessary to proceed from the goals that it is going to solve and the financial possibilities - everything depends on the area of tasks of the particular company.
PS A few more materials on the topic from the First Corporate IaaS blog:
/ photo Arthur Caranta CCUptime Institute classification
Customers of data center operators have always had certain expectations and requirements for the infrastructure provided. Basically it was about reliability and security - the most significant indicators when choosing a data center. A milestone in the development of standardization was the unification of like-minded people into the group Uninterruptible Uptime Users Group (UUUG) in 1989. According to Edward Rafter, an engineer who designed data centers at an early stage of industry development in the United States, this event marked a turning point in the exchange of experience and was the first impulse to assess the infrastructure of data centers.
')
In 1993, the organization of the Uptime Institute, with the help of an association of companies responsible for servicing the most important data centers in America, created a base for the exchange of experience. On its basis, methods for evaluating the effectiveness of data processing centers have been developed. The aspects that influence business decision making were analyzed: about 30 performance factors related to location, environmental impact and quality of service, and 16 technical subsystems. The Uptime Institute focused on the latter when developing the classification. It was framed in the 1990s as a standardized methodology.
Uptime Institute has the rights to certify data centers in accordance with the Tier-system in the design, construction and operation of infrastructure worldwide. Data centers in Russia are developed in accordance with the requirements of the TIA-942 standard of the Data Transmission Equipment Manufacturers Association (TIA) of the Institute of American National Standards. TIA requirements cover the areas of construction, power supply, cooling, security control, redundancy, maintainability and commissioning.
Uptime Institute and internal GOSTs are used in Russia as additions to TIA standards. It is important that the TIA-942, introduced in 2005, in turn, is based on the Uptime Institute standard. Moreover, an agreement was reached between the Uptime Institute and TIA, as a result of which the Association refused to use the term Tier in its methodology. Now it is fully connected with the activities of the Uptime Institute.
If we talk about the differences between the two approaches, it is worth noting that the Uptime Institute system does not seek to provide a tough technical specification of how to design and build data centers. The TIA standard, by contrast, dictates specific resource and accessibility requirements for each level. Unlike the Uptime Institute, TIA does not have the authority to conduct a formal data center assessment procedure. There is also no group of appraisers monitoring compliance with standards. However, the specific requirements for each level are publicly available and there is no fee for their use. In contrast, the Uptime Institute conducts paid data center certification.
There are four levels of the Uptime Institute standard:
- Tier I - basic infrastructure without reservation;
- Tier II - infrastructure with spare capacity;
- Tier III - parallel repair infrastructure;
- Tier IV - fault tolerant infrastructure.
Each next level of certification includes requirements for all previous levels.
The first-level data center provides a dedicated infrastructure to support IT systems outside the office, an uninterruptible power supply for filtering voltage surges and handling short-term outages, special cooling equipment that continues to operate at the end of the day, a generator to protect systems from prolonged power outages .
Second-tier data centers include redundant capabilities for critical components in order to provide repair and increase protection of IT-processes from failures. Redundant systems include power and cooling equipment, such as uninterruptible power supplies, chillers or pumps, and generators.
About our data centers
The Tier III data center does not require the shutdown of hardware to replace hardware and maintenance. A backup power and cooling channel is added to the components so that each element necessary to support the IT system can be turned off, and this does not affect the operation.
In addition to all the features of the previous level, data centers of Tier IV are characterized by increased (even greater than that of Tier III) fault tolerance, that is, failures of individual elements or interruptions of the backup channel do not affect IT operations.
It is believed that the expected level of uptime of the Tier I data center is 99.671% (1729 minutes of annual downtime); Tier 2 - 99.741% (1361 minutes of annual downtime); Tier III - 99.982% (95 minutes of annual downtime); Tier IV - 99.995% (26 minutes of annual downtime).
Why do we need a classification of data centers?
Uptime Institute accepts applications from data center operators for independent assessment of infrastructure. This is a voluntary procedure that not all companies resort to. At the same time, based on the basic idea of classification, transparency in the choice of data center is a blessing for customers. Therefore, starting in 2015, the Uptime Institute began to encourage operators to undergo certification.
The organization announced a new parameter for assessing data centers - energy efficiency. Two levels of compliance are offered: “approved” and “activated”. The evaluation result, according to the Uptime Institute, demonstrates the company's best practices in the industry. The proven energy efficiency of the data center is an additional argument for customers to choose.
In general, the classification is important for the client, as it acts as a guarantee of meeting the expectations of the final result in the issue of uptime and performance. Joe Hertvik, head of Hertvik Business Services consulting company, defines several scenarios for using a rating system:
- Risk assessment of infrastructure transfer to the cloud provider.
- Setting up a data center to ensure its compliance with specific business needs.
- Providing a certificate to customers as an added benefit.
- Select the level of network availability in risk assessment.
The set of subsystems on which the Uptime Institute focuses its attention suggests that the infrastructure assessment allows you to make informed decisions when choosing data centers and to form adequate expectations.
Which tier to choose?
There is a common misconception : the level of quality of data center services increases with each Tier. In fact, the classification of data centers is not aimed at determining the best type of data centers. Each Tier is designed to meet diverse business needs and performance requirements. Different businesses need a different infrastructure, and for most organizations, hosting Tier IV is simply inefficient.
In 2013, the Data Center Dynamics portal surveyed a group of experts to find out whether it was worth overpaying for the transition to a higher Tier. Raul Shewale, a consultant at Capgemini, and Dr. Carlos Garcia de la Noceda agreed that the Tier III data center could have a more robust infrastructure and be more cost effective than Tier Iv. And William Angle (William Angle), director of CS Technology, who participated in the creation of the first Tier IV facility in the world, believes that almost 60% of all failures are due to people, and not because of infrastructure - therefore it does not always make sense to turn to maximum configurations.
Uptime Institute employees also report that the cost of data center infrastructure and operational complexity increase from level to level, and owners should choose a Tier that best suits the needs of a particular business.
“Tier IV is not always a“ better ”Tier II solution. The infrastructure of the data processing center should correspond to commercial use, otherwise companies can invest excessively large capital or take on too much risk, ”the organization’s website says .
If you recall the latest news, you can see that the desire of Bangladesh and Fujitsu to Tier IV data centers is due to climatic and seismic situations, but not the best characteristics of these data centers in comparison with others. The Bangladesh authorities announced the construction of a mega-data center as far back as 2014, and at the same time information appeared about the choice of an earthquake-prone area for these purposes.
Uptime Insitute representatives said that earthquake risks are not taken into account in Tier certification, however, according to Gary Wong from telecommunications company Instor Solutions, the seismic isolation method is taken into account by Uptime Insitute for awarding Tier IV in seismically hazardous areas. Regarding the update of the status of Fujitsu data centers in Australia, it was caused by a lightning strike in 2015, said Fujitsu executive director in Australia and New Zealand, Mike Foster.
In practice, it turns out that the capabilities of Tier I and Tier II data centers are usually sufficient for enterprises that can cope with occasional server downtime during off-hours. For companies whose business operates 24 hours a day around the world, or for companies where any downtime will adversely affect operations, an investment in Tier III or Tier IV can be worth it.
In other words, Tier I is suitable for small enterprises, in which the IT infrastructure only expands internal business processes and is not the main tool. Tier II will be sufficient for small businesses whose IT requests are mostly limited to traditional business hours and allow you to turn off the system during off-hours. Large enterprises with obligations for round-the-clock customer service and business process automation, operating in areas where quality of service is a competitive advantage, can choose between Tier III and Tier IV. However, protection against downtime in the case of Tier III is sufficient in most situations.
For example, in IT-GRAD we chose to host part of our distributed infrastructure of the SDN data center in St. Petersburg, which is a data center of Tier III level. This is enough to provide popular IT services, ranging from co-location to rental of IaaS-cloud, certified in accordance with the requirements of the PCI DSS standard .
To ensure proper reliability, SDN uses solutions such as dynamic uninterruptible power supplies, its own distribution substation, modular structure, and cooling by KyotoCooling BV units based on rotary heat exchange. Data center security is provided by multi-level protection with multiple perimeters.
Support for temperature and humidity conditions in SDN
In Moscow, we chose one of the largest DataSpace Moscow data centers as a cloud platform, containing 12 computer halls for 1,000 racks. DataSpace also went through the full Tier III Gold certification cycle according to the standards of the Uptime Institute, with full redundancy of engineering systems and ensuring a high level of availability with the ability to perform both routine and maintenance work without interrupting IT and business processes. Colocation services are provided on the basis of the Service Level Agreement (SLA), according to the terms of which we obtain 100% availability of equipment, applications and data, which is higher than the Tier III Facility certification standard
Thus, in the discussion about the best Tier, there is no universal answer - Tier IV is not a “silver bullet” and is only suitable for a limited type of organization. When choosing the level of the company's data center, first of all, it is necessary to proceed from the goals that it is going to solve and the financial possibilities - everything depends on the area of tasks of the particular company.
PS A few more materials on the topic from the First Corporate IaaS blog:
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/332864/
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