Companies that are interested in housing a server they own at a data center should spend time considering their options. While there are essential considerations, such as data center location, reputation, cost, and services provided, businesses have the ability to narrow down their choices by understanding how data centers are rated.
Data centers are placed in tiers, which is a form of ranking to help create a universal understanding of the performance and features of the different facilities. The tiers are numbered from one to four, with the higher numbers offering the best levels of performance, uptime, redundancy, and security.
The classification of a data center is completed by an independent organization. The Uptime Institute provides a wide variety of assessments, IT services, and support for companies, data centers, and other IT infrastructure providers around the world.
First and Second Tiers
Generally, first and second tier data centers providing colocation services offer a lower-cost option. However, there are some issues that can be problematic for a company. These data centers have the lowest uptime (99.671% and 99.741%, respectively), which translates into about 22 to 28 hours of downtime per year. They have one power and cooling supply, and they have to go offline for maintenance.
Third and Fourth Tiers
Growing companies and large businesses are typically focused on the balance of pricing and uptime offered by Tier lll data centers for their location needs. These colocation services offered at least 99.982% uptime, or less than 1.6 hours per year, combined with full redundancies, concurrent maintenance, and staffing to address issues any maintenance or service issues.
In general, Tier 4 data centers are used by government agencies and those companies with excessive traffic and processing needs on a continual basis.
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