Now that you know what each tier in the data center ranking system represents, how do you know which one best suits your business? Does Tier 4, or will Tiers 1, 2, or 3 suit your business?
For starters, let’s consider the cost impact on a business. Not surprisingly, the cost of collocating in a data center increases as the tier increases. With that, while Tier 4 is considered the most robust and least likely to experience failures; Tiers 1 and 2 largely meet the uptime requirements of small to medium sized businesses; and Tier 3 suits many large companies rather well. Tier 4 is most ideally suited for multi-million dollar companies, including those that house mission critical servers and computer systems.
The below graph, courtesy of Eze Castle Integration, exemplifies the four tiers, and which tier suits a specific type of business.
PHOTO COURTESY OF: http://www.eci.com/blog/
The Process of Certifying Data Centers
The certification process, offered by The Uptime Institute allows companies to hallmark their data centers under clearly defined guidelines. Certification is offered by licensed engineers at Uptime Institute after they have audited and accessed your paperwork applications. The map below represents companies from more than 19 countries worldwide with officially certified data centers.
Although many data centers may not be officially certified, the collocation and wider data center industry uses the Tiering system as an authoritative point of reference. The reason the popularity of the tier system continues to grow among the industry is because it is an easy, accurate reference for a data center’s reliability, security and stability.
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