What Datacenter Tier Is Right

For Your Organization?

Introduction

Whether you are building new datacenter or buyingdatacenter space from service provider, the most importantquestion is what is the right Tier of the datacenter to hostyour application? Answer to this question not only hasbiggest impact on availability of your application but also onthe cost of hosting that application.

Let's understand the types of datacenters, meaning of Tiersand how they impact the budget.

Datacenter Classifications

The most common way to classify the datacenters is basedon their Tier.

Understanding the Datacenter Tiers

The concept of "Uptime" was pioneered by the Uptime

Institute, founded in 1993. It introduced well defined TierClassification system: I, II, III and IV. Tier IV represents thehighest level of projected availability. Today, TierCertification system is globally recognized. Ken Brill, the latefounder of Uptime Institute, introduced a four-tier rankingsystem in the late 1990s, which grades datacenters on theirpower supplies, fault tolerances, and expected downtime.

What Datacenter Tier Is Right For Your Organization?

While not everyone subscribes to the Uptime Institute andtheir certification officially, references to Tier 2, 3 or 4 arecommon among those seeking to ascribe a certain level ofdesign or construction to a datacenter's overall availabilityor system redundancy. Also while other institutes andbodies have formed their Tier certifications,

Uptime Institute guidelines, the pioneer in this field, remainthe most respected and comprehensive standard.

Datacenters are dependent upon the successful andintegrated operation of at least 16 separate siteinfrastructure subsystems. Every subsystem and systemmust be consistently deployed with the same site uptimeobjective to satisfy the distinctive Tier requirements

In a nutshell, following are the high level requirements ofrespective Tiers:

Let's understand different Tiers of Datacenters in little moredetail:

Tier-I Datacenter: Basic Site Infrastructure

� A Tier I basic datacenter has non-redundantcomponents and a single, non-redundant distributionpath serving the computer equipments.

� The site is susceptible to disruption from both plannedand unplanned activities.

� Operational (Human) errors of site infrastructurecomponents will cause a data center disruption.

� An unplanned outage or failure of any system,component, or distribution element will impact thecomputer equipments.

� The site infrastructure must be completely shut down onan annual basis to safely perform necessary preventivemaintenance and repair work.

� Urgent situations may require more frequent shutdowns.

Tier-II Datacenter: Redundant Site InfrastructureComponents

� A Tier II data center has redundant components and asingle, non-redundant distribution path serving thecomputer equipment

� The site is susceptible to disruption from both plannedactivities and unplanned events.

� Operational (Human) errors of site infrastructurecomponents will cause a data center disruption.

� An unplanned component failure, outage or failure of anycapacity system or distribution element will impact thecomputer equipment.

� The site infrastructure must be completely shut down onan annual basis to safely perform preventivemaintenance and repair work.

� Urgent situations may require more frequent shutdowns.

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Tier-III Datacenter: Concurrent Maintenable SiteInfrastructure

� A Concurrently Maintainable data center has redundantcomponents and multiple independent distribution pathsserving the computer equipment.

� Only one distribution path is required to serve thecomputer equipment at any time.

� All IT equipment is dual-powered and installed properlyto be compatible with the topology of the site'sarchitecture. Transfer devices, such as STS, must beincorporated for computer equipment that does notmeet this specification.

� The site is less susceptible to disruption from unplannedactivities. Operational errors of site infrastructurecomponents may cause a computer disruption.

� An unplanned outage or failure of a component ordistribution element may not impact the computerequipment.

� Planned site infrastructure maintenance can beperformed by using the redundant components anddistribution paths to safely work on the remainingequipment.

� During maintenance activities, the risk of disruption maybe elevated

Tier-IV Datacenter: Fault Tolerant Site Infrastructure

� A Fault Tolerant data center has multiple, independent,physically isolated systems that provide redundantcomponents and multiple, independent, diverse, activedistribution paths simultaneously serving the computerequipment.

� The redundant components and diverse distributionpaths shall be configured such that "N" capacity isproviding power and cooling to the computer equipmentafter any infrastructure failure.

� All IT equipment is dual powered and installed properly

to be compatible with the topology of the site'sarchitecture. Transfer devices, such STS, must beincorporated for computer equipment that does notmeet this specification.

� Complementary systems and distribution paths must bephysically isolated from one another(compartmentalized) to prevent any single event fromsimultaneously impacting both systems and distributionpaths.

� Each and every component and element in thedistribution paths can be removed from service onplanned basis without impacting any of the computerequipment.

� There is sufficient capacity to meet the needs of the sitewhen redundant components or distribution paths areremoved from service for any reason

� The site is not susceptible to disruption from a singleunplanned event or planned activity.

� The site infrastructure maintenance can be performed byusing the redundant capacity components anddistribution paths to safely work on the remainingequipment.

� During maintenance activity where redundant capacitycomponents or a distribution path shut down, thecomputer equipment is exposed to an increased risk ofdisruption in the event a failure occurs on the remainingpath. This maintenance configuration does not defeatthe Tier rating achieved in normal operations.

� Operation of the fire alarm, fire suppression, etc. featuremay cause a data center disruption.

Following chart illustrates the main features, similarities anddifferences in different Tier requirements:

How Tiers Impact Datacenter Cost?

Now that we have established better the Tier, better isavailability of your IT equipments, let's see how we should

What Datacenter Tier Is Right For Your Organization?

What Datacenter Tier Is Right For Your Organization?

choose right Tier of datacenter for your IT infrastructure. Itcan be easily understood that going from one Tier to nextone means additional expenses - CapEx for setting it up andOpEx for maintaining it. And the cost of going from one Tierto another is significant. Following table gives a high leveloverview of the cost increment assuming Tier 1 as the base.

One thing is clear, whether you are building a newdatacenter yourselves or looking to lease space fromdatacenter provider, Tier is going to have major impact onyour decision. This is because the datacenter serviceprovider is going to recover the cost of build and maintain ofthe datacenter from you. The decision of the datacenter Tier

should not be based on emotions like best available Tier butit should be driven by the IT requirements. For all practicalpurposes, Tier-II meets most of the availability requirements.So the decision to upgrade from Tier-III to Tier-IV has to behard fought by CFOs!

Which Tier is Right for Your Organization?

Every company has its own unique IT requirement. The CIOis best judge of the right datacenter Tier for IT but there areenough guidelines available to help CIOs chose rightdatacenter. Following table provides one such high levelguideline for choosing datacenter Tier:

References

http://www.uptimeinstitute.com/

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2012/03/21/understanding-uptime-and-data-center-tier-levels/

http://www.colocationamerica.com/data-center/tier-standards-overview.htm

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About Netmagic Solutions (An NTT Communications Company)

Netmagic, an NTT Communications company, is India’s leading Managed Hosting and Cloud Service Provider, with 8 carrier-neutral, state-of-the-art datacenters across the country. Established in 1998, Netmagic has been a pioneer in the Indian IT Infrastructure services space as it was the first to launch services such as cloud computing, managed security, Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service and software-defined storage. An IT Infrastructure Partner to more than 1400 enterprises globally, Netmagic, also delivers Remote Infrastructure Management services to NTT Communications’ customers across Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific region. Netmagic is the recipient of several industry accolades and was recently chosen by India’s CIO community as the best service provider of Datacenter Managed Services and Cloud services, at the CIO Choice 2015 Awards.NTT Communications has subsidiaries and offices in 43 countries / regions, with over 21,600 employees worldwide. It had total operating revenues of 1230bilion JPY for year ending March 31, 2014 and has infrastructure worldwide, including leading global tier-1 IP network, the Arcstar Universal One™ VPN network reaching 196 countries/regions, and 130 secure datacenters.

NTT Communications is a part of NTT Corporation, Japan – one of world’s largest telecommunications companies and ranked 53 on Fortune Global 500 list (2014).

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About NTT Communications Corporation

NTT Communications provides consultancy, architecture, security and cloud services to optimize the information and communications technology (ICT) environments of enterprises. These offerings are backed by the company’s worldwide infrastructure, including leading global tier-1 IP network, Arcstar Universal One™ VPN network reaching 196 countries/regions, and over 150 secure data centers. NTT Communications’ solutions leverage the global resources of NTT Group companies including Dimension Data, NTT DOCOMO and NTT DATA