Fire, Power loss at Fisher Plaza in Seattle

Fri Jul 3 18:49:57 UTC 2009

On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 1:20 PM, Tomas L. Byrnes<tomb at byrneit.net> wrote:
> This begs the question of what basic parameters should be for a
> "carrier hotel" or co-lo. [...] The old NEBS standards were too much
> of a straightjacket.

Tomas,

There is a useful standard: ANSI/TIA-942. It offers specifications for
four tiers of data centers ranging from tier 1 (a basic data center
with no redundancy) to tier 4 (fully fault tolerant).

http://www.tiaonline.org/standards/catalog/search.cfm?standards_criteria=TIA-942
(the 2005 one)

Judging from http://www.techlinks.net/community/articles/article/1-article-submission-forms/14833-a-quick-primer-on-data-center-tier-classifications
there's even research that projects what sort of annual downtime you
can expect for each of the tiers described by the standard.

When I walk into a data center, I make a habit of asking which tier
they achieve, at least for the HVAC and electrical systems. And then I
ask to see the components which the tier claim says they should have.

Regards,
Bill Herrin

-- 
William D. Herrin ................ herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/>
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