We can help you with all aspects of your data centre and equipment room
projects including:-
- planning and design
- construction and civil works
- raised access flooring
- copper and fibre cabling infrastructure
- power management and electrical distribution systems
- air-conditioning and cooling systems
- environmental management systems
- access control, surveillance and alarm systems
- fire detection and suppression systems
- UPS and automatic generating systems
- cableway and racking solutions
If you need to relocate an existing data centre then our experienced project managers will handle all the details and manage all the risks so that you achieve a successful migration and maintain business continuity.
Best Practice Approach Saves Cost
The most important element of your data centre build project will be your specification of requirements. This is because project costs can vary considerably depending upon the levels of resilience, performance and security required.
We recommend taking a best practice approach when specifying requirements and advocate the use of TIA-942 Telecommunications Infrastructure Standard for Data Centers. This standard specifies minimum infrastructure requirements for single and multi-tenanted data centres and equipment rooms and is applicable to implementations of any size.
Another useful reference is the data centre tier classification system developed by The Uptime Institute (www.uptimeinstitute.com). This classification system provides a benchmark for reliable data centre infrastructure design by providing IT based definitions and performance requirements against the four tier model below.
To avoid costly overspend or potentially fatal under-specification why not get some free help from one of our data centre experts by dropping a line to us at Ask The Experts.
There is absolutely no obligation, no salesman will call and all emails will be handled in the strictest confidence.
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Data Centre Tier Classifications
Tier I - Basic Data Centre
A Tier I data centre is susceptible to disruptions from both planned and unplanned activity. It has computer power distribution and cooling, but it may or may not have a raised floor, a UPS, or an engine generator. If it does have UPS or generators, they are single-module systems and have many single points of failure. The infrastructure should be completely shut down on an annual basis to perform preventive maintenance and repair work. Urgent situations may require more frequent shutdowns. Operation errors or spontaneous failures of site infrastructure components will cause a data centre disruption.
Tier I data centres typically achieve 99.671% availability.
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Tier II - Data Centre with Redundant Components
Tier II facilities with redundant components are slightly less susceptible to disruptions from both planned and unplanned activity than a basic data centre. They have a raised floor, UPS, and engine generators, but their capacity design is “Need plus One” (N+1), which has a single-threaded distribution path throughout. Maintenance of the critical power path and other parts of the site infrastructure will require a processing shutdown.
Tier II data centres typically achieve 99.749% availability.
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Tier III - Concurrently Maintainable Data Centre
Tier III level capability allows for any planned site infrastructure activity without disrupting the computer hardware operation in any way. Planned activities include preventive and programmable maintenance, repair and replacement of components, addition or removal of capacity components, testing of components and systems, and more. For large sites using chilled water, this means two independent sets of pipes. Sufficient capacity and distribution must be available to simultaneously carry the load on one path while performing maintenance or testing on the other path. Unplanned activities such as errors in operation or spontaneous failures of facility infra-structure components will still cause a data centre disruption. Tier III sites are often designed to be upgraded to Tier IV when the client’s business case justifies the cost of additional protection.
Tier III data centres typically achieve 99.982% availability.
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Tier IV - Fault Tolerant Data Centre
Tier IV provides site infrastructure capacity and capability to permit any planned activity without disruption to the critical load. Fault-tolerant functionality also provides the ability of the site infrastructure to sustain at least one worst-case unplanned failure or event with no critical load impact. This requires simultaneously active distribution paths, typically in a System+System configuration. Electrically, this means two separate UPS systems in which each system has N+1 redundancy. There will still be downtime exposure due to fire alarms or people initiating an Emergency Power Off (EPO). Tier IV requires all computer hardware to have dual power inputs as defined by The Uptime Institute’s Fault Tolerant Power Compliance Specification Version 1.2. (www.uptimeinstitute.org/spec.html).
Tier IV data centres typically achieve 99.995% availability.
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