Questions to Ask Yourself When Selecting a Data Center: Is the infrastructure built to meet or exceed Tier III standards?

 

Jim Masterson, CEO

 http://www.lightedge.com/datacenters

According to a study by the Ponemon Institute, the cost of data center downtime across industries is approximately $7,900 per minute, which is a 41% increase from the $5,600 cost in 2010. This same study also showed that 91% of data centers have experienced an unplanned outage in the past 24 months. (Read more about the average costs involved with outages for 2013 here). Facility outages are not only financially devastating, but seriously harmful to an organization’s reputation.
Thankfully, the data center industry has adopted a standardized methodology to determine availability in a facility, which will help you determine what is right for your business so you can make an informed decision.  Developed by the Uptime Institute, this tiered system offers companies a way to measure both performance and return on investment (ROI).
To be considered a Tier III facility it must meet or exceed the following standards:

• Multiple independent distribution paths serving the IT equipment
• Concurrently maintainable site infrastructure with expected availability of 99.982%
• 72 hour power outage protection
• All IT equipment must be dual-powered and fully compatible with the topology of a site’s architecture

Another important element in Tier III compliance is N+1 redundancy on every main component, which provides greater protection and peace of mind for crucial IT operations by ensuring a redundant system is always available in case a component fails or must be taken offline for maintenance.

Each LightEdge data center, including the new Kansas City facility currently being built at SubTropolis Technology Center, meets or exceeds the concurrent maintainability requirements of the Uptime Institutes Tier III standards. With our Tier III infrastructure, any one component can fail and the datacenter will remain operational.

LightEdge’s Kansas Center data center is scheduled to open during the spring of this year. Check out our Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn pages for the most recent photos of our construction progress. Download the spec sheet to learn more about the facility here.