Data centers must meet specific universal requirements to be ranked into a tier system. This globally accepted and utilized method of describing data centers makes it easy for businesses to choose a facility that offers a specific standard of service and infrastructure.
There are four different Tiers that go from Tier 1 to Tier 4. Tier 1 has the lowest required uptime and only offers a single source of power and cooling. Most have only rudimentary redundancies or backup systems if any. Tier 2 offers slightly higher uptime (99.741% compared to Tier 1 99.671%), but that still means about 22 hours a year when the data center is offline.
For most businesses, a Tier 3 data center is the ideal choice. It is highly reliable, offers redundancies, and provides exceptional uptime. Some of the advantages of a Tier 3 data center include:
• Uptime – this must be 99.9982% uptime or just 1.6 hours of possible downtime over the entire year.
• Ability to complete maintenance and upgrades without going offline – the redundancies provide the data center the ability to complete most maintenance and upgrade work without any need for the facility to go offline.
• Redundancies – these are N +1 fault tolerant facilities that have built-in power and cooling redundancies. In the event of a complete power failure, the facility must have a 72-hour minimum backup power option in place. This is in the form of a backup generator and automatic transfer switch system that can provide all the power required for continuous operation for 72 hours.
In addition, these Tier 3 data centers are highly secure, provide around the clock monitoring of the system, and have exceptional connections to networking and telecom hubs and providers.
Web Werks data centers are designed to meet or exceed all Tier 3 data center requirements. To learn more about our data center location around the world, see us at www.webwerks.in.
