You must have heard about Data Centers. This is the facility for housing millions of servers.
But, Are all the Data Centers same?
Unfortunately! The Answer is No.
Technologically data centers are of 4 types.
Without wasting any single minute, let’s get into the blog.
What are Data Center Tiers?
Data Centers are classified into a system called “Tiers.” The Data Center Tiers are ranked from 1 to 4, and higher-ranked data centers have more potential Uptime than a lower-ranked data center. So basically, Tier 1 to 4 Data Center is nothing but a standardized methodology used to define the Uptime of a Data Center.
And it is used for measuring:
- Datacenter Performance
- Investment
- ROI (Return of Investment)
- Reliability
However, the latest Tier is ‘Tier 5’, which is now in the developing phase. It comprise all the facilities of Tier 4 with additional features.
A ‘Tier’ is also another way of saying ‘Level of Service’. In this article, we are going to describe – What are Data Center Tiers? So, let’s go further to get in detail about all the Tiers of the Data Center.
How Are Data Center Tiers Classified & Why Are They Important?
In the subsequent section, we are going to elaborate classification of Data Center Tiers. The data center is classified into the four-tier level. All of them are described below.
- Tier I Data Center (Basic capacity)
- Tier II Data Center (Redundant capacity components)
- Tier III Data Center (Concurrently Maintainable)
- Tier IV Data Center (Fault Tolerance)
What is Tier 1 Data Center?
Tier 1 data center is the lowest Tier standard, and small businesses or shops generally utilize it. Tier 1 Data Center has enough facilities to keep the Data Center running. However, if one of the components or a small chip is removed, the entire Data Center comes to a halt.
Moreover, Tier 1 facility is not for tolerance at all. If any power outage happens and any emergency condition occurs, the system will be shut down.
Tier 1 = Non – redundant capacity
Tier 1 Datacenter Specifications:
- It provides a single path for Power and Cooling
- Non-redundant Capacity components (Single uplink and servers)
- Provides 99.671% availability
- 28.8 hours of downtime annually
What is Tier 2 Data Center?
A Tier 2 Data Center contains all the characteristics of the Tier 1 Datacenter. Additionally, Tier 2 Data Center has some partial redundancy in the power and cooling component. Tier 2 DC overcomes Tier 1 technical glitches by providing some additional features. It includes the dynamic power and cooling setup, which will not shut down the data centre at any cost. In addition, any failure of components can be manually operated by switching over to a redundant server for a short period of downtime. However, scheduled maintenance still requires downtime.
Tier 2 = Tier 1 + Redundant Capacity Components
Tier 2 Data Center Specifications:
- A single path for power and cooling distribution
- Redundant Capacity Components
- Provides 99.741% availability
- 22 hours of downtime annually
What is Tier 3 Data Center?
A Tier 3 Data Center contains all the features of Tier 1 and Tier 2 Data Center and ensures equipment is dual-powered and has multiple uplinks.
With multiple paths for power and cooling system in place, the system will remain online even during the planned maintenance and outages. All the equipment is connected to different UPS units. So the UPS units can be taken offline without cutting off network connectivity. The redundant cooling system is also in place so that if one cooling unit fails, the other one continues to cool the room.
Moreover, Tier 3 Data Center offers the most cost-effective solutions for medium to large businesses. The companies that require a constant online presence or 24* 7 online presence can opt for Tier 3 Data Center.
Tier 3 = Tier 1 + Tier 2 + Dual-powered Equipment & Multiple Links.
Tier 3 Data Center Specification:
- Provides 99.982% availability
- 1.6 hours of downtime annually (not more than this)
- Composed of multiple paths for power and cooling distribution.
- N+1 fault-tolerance with at least 72-hour power outage protection
What is Tier 4?
This Tier 4 is considered the most robust and less prone to failures. A Tier 4 Data Center includes the features of Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 Data Centers and ensures that all equipment is fault-resistant. The IT components are serviced by two different utility power suppliers, two generators, two UPS systems, and two different cooling systems powered by various utility power services. Each data and the cooling path is fully redundant. If any of the power or cooling unit fails, processing will continue without any issue.
Tier 4 DC is the minimal improvement in availability as compared to Tier 3 DC. It also has a high cost than Tier 3 Data Center.
Tier 4= Tier 1+ Tier 2+ Tier 3 + all components are fully fault-tolerant, including uplinks, storage, chillers, HVDC systems, servers, etc. Everything is dual powered.
Tier 4 Specifications:
- Provides 99.995% availability
- 26.3 minutes of downtime annually
- Composed of multiple power and cooling distribution paths.
- 2N+1 Fault tolerance with at least 96-hour power outage protection (the main difference between Tier 3 data center and Tier 4)
- Zero single points of Failure
NetForChoice works with Tier 4 enterprise-class data center, which ensures data security & availability with high redundancy features. It facilitates dual-powered instances of the server, cooling equipment, Network Links, Storage, and Power. It also guarantees 99.995% Uptime with a downtime of 22 minutes per year.
Moreover, NetForChoice offers Bare Metal Server, Colocation Hosting, Shared Hosting, Cloud Hosting, Managed Hosting Solutions, VPS Hosting, Hosted ERP like Tally on Cloud, Busy On Cloud, Marg On Cloud, Dedicated Servers in India and much more with Tier 4 DC.
Finally! Which DC Tier You Should Choose For Your Business?
Going through all this made you understand what Data Center Tiers and their specifications are. But, it is also essential to understand your business needs for using the Tier 1, 2, 3, or 4 Datacenter provider. Tier 1 and Tier 2 data centers may work well for small to medium-sized businesses with a 24*7 requirement. And it may not be worth it for small firms to put in the extra investment to run in Tier 3 or 4 environments.
However, if you are a large multi-national organization that does business round-the-clock and has several applications that can never be down, you have to host your apps on Tier 3 Data Center.