Tier Classifications Define Site
Infrastructure
Performance Updated!
By W. Pitt Turner, IV. John H. Seader and Kenneth G. Brill
Widely accepted within the uninterruptible industry, The Uptime Institute’s Tier Performance Standards are an objective basis for comparing the capabilities of a particular design topology against others or to compare groups of sites. This paper defines a four Tier system providing discussion and illustrations of each classification. Significant cautions about Tier misapplication are provided. While the paper focuses primarily on design topology, sustainability (how the site is operated once constructed) plays a more significant role in what site availability is actually achieved. Actual site performance figures combining both design topology and sustainability are presented by Tier classification.
This white paper:
- Equips non-technical managers with a simple and effective means for identifying different data center site infrastructure design topologies.
- Provides IT based definitions and performance requirements for each Tier Level.
- Provides actual 5-year availability for 16 major sites by Tier classification.
- Warns that site availability is a combination of both design topology and “sustainability” with considerable optimization “art” involved.
- Warns that component/system counts or MTBF analysis plays no role in determining Tier compliance partially because each fails to include sustainability factors which account for 70% of all infrastructure failures.
- Cautions “self proclaimed” Tier claims all too often turn out to be misleading, incomplete, or wrong.
- Outlines need for third-party validation of site selection, design, and sustainability decisions before committing to multi-million dollar projects.
- Provides a commentary on typical Tier attributes.
