The debate on whether there is really a need for a Tier 4 Data Center still rages on. Some in the industry feel that there isn’t a real need for a Tier 4 Data Center and that the costs involved in the installation may not be worth the advantages of it. Before we discuss the significance of a Tier 4 Data Center and see why it would be a good choice for your business, let us get into what this Tier classification is all about.
Over the past decades, much advancement has been made in the Data Center Industry. Considering the different design topologies and associated site availability metrics with regard to Data Centers, the need for the Tier Performance Standards was clearly visible. An analytical approach to evaluate the performance of a Data center became of increasing significance with the tremendous growth of the Data Center Industry. The surge of increase in the number of data centers and the correspondingly significant increase in internet business interests made it necessary to come up with clearly defined performance criteria to assess the efficiency of data centers and help businesses make an informed strategic choice. There are a number of approaches to the Tier system of Classification like the Ten Tier Classification and the 11 aspects of data center performance defined by the Syska Hennessy Group. However, the four tiered classification system of the Uptime Institute is considered to be the most reliable. Each level of the tier was established from the 60’s onward and each of them represents an increased level of performance.
This being said, it is obvious that the highest Tier to be defined, which is the Tier 4, represents the highest level of performance. Of the many advantages provided by a Tier 4 Data Center, a significant feature is the Fault-tolerant functionality. This enables the site infrastructure to sustain unplanned failures that would otherwise adversely affect the critical load. Being fault tolerant, the computer equipment of a Tier 4 Data Center will not be impacted if there is a single failure of any distribution element or capacity component. The system will automatically respond to prevent further disaster on site. The Tier 4 Data Center also has multiple distribution paths which can serve the site’s computer equipment simultaneously. This was not a feature of the Tier 3 data center. The IT equipment will all be dual powered providing further backup. The site availability expectation of a Tier 4 data center is 0.4 hours and availability percentage is found to be 99.99%! This is of vital importance to businesses with high availability requirements. Industries which deal in market transactions, E-Commerce, financial settlements, and the sort most benefit from a Tier 4 data center. The Tier 4 Data Center has come to be known to be reliable and robust and represents the highest level of reliability, security and availability among all the Tiers which makes it the ideal choice for corporations.
To reiterate, the significance of a Tier 4 Data Center in corporations with high availability requirements cannot be underestimated. The Tier 4 classification indicates the most robustly designed data center to be found thus making a Tier 4 Data center the most obvious choice for corporations globally.