Tier Requirements for Power
Situation
Reliability & Economics
• Tier Certified datacenters can
combine onsite reliable
power with more economical
best-case utility power for
cost-efficiency when coupled
with autonomous failover
• Disruptions to utility power
are not considered a failure,
but an anticipated operational
condition for which any site
must be prepared
• Uptime’s Tier Standard has
no specific requirements for
the number or type of utility
provided power sources
• Onsite Power generation is
the only source of truly
reliable – it is completely
within the span of control of
any organization, with no
conflicting business goals
• Utility-Provided power is the
most economical source of
power when compared to the
operational and maintenance
costs of on-site generated
power
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Uptime Institute’s Tier Topology standard has been created to assure any organization can meet
its required levels of business services by relying on a predictable level of performance in the
data center. While power is one of the most critical resources used to operate any data center,
the types of power utilized to operate that data center greatly influence the results achieved.
With 20 years of incident data across more than 1000 data centers to draw from, the Uptime
Institute Tier Standard asserts that onsite power generation is the only source of reliable power.
The high level of performance available from Tier certified datacenters stems from power
distribution designs that rely only on this reliable power. That said, the Tier standard also
allows for Tier compliant data centers to use other utility sources of power as long as
autonomous fail-over is provided for. The Uptime Institute Tier Standard thus creates a data
center environment that is both predictable for business needs and economical to operate.
Predictable Performance power from a local electrical utility than
to run the onsite generation systems
Simply put, all Tier Standard compliant because onsite generation total costs
data centers require reliable power to include each component’s maintenance
deliver predictable performance and costs, the costs of fuel, and the non-trivial
resiliency. And perhaps less intuitive is wear and tear on the onsite equipment.
the reality that the only source of reliable
power is onsite power generation systems
since they are built, maintained and
operated by the consumer. Keep in mind:
• Disruptions to the utility power are
not considered a failure, but an
anticipated operational condition for
which the site must be prepared
• A Tier III or IV on-site generation
system, along with its power paths
Putting it All Together
and other supporting elements, shall
meet the Concurrently Maintainable Tier requirements work to ensure a data
and/or Fault Tolerant performance center is capable of delivering it’s
confirmation tests when powered by required level of business services
on-site power generation regardless of the status of outside utility
services. In specific, Uptime Institute Tier
Trading off Cost versus Reliability
compliance assures that the data center
Because Tiers requires data centers to meets the requirements for reliable power
have onsite power generation systems to and cooling regardless of the status of
support the data center’s normal external utility sources. Tier compliant
operation, public electric utility systems data centers are capable of operating in
are not required. However, most Tier the worst-case conditions when outside
compliant data centers choose to utilize a utility systems are not available for an
public electrical utility to provide power indefinite period of time.
to the data center for economic reasons.
Typically, it is less costly to purchase
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data company. Uptime Institute has office locations in the U.S., Mexico, Costa Rica,
Brazil, U.K., Spain, U.A.E., Russia, Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia.
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