Data centre tiers explained

Data centre tiers – are you on the right one for your business?

In our short series of posts on costs of IT services and why some services are cheaper than others across providers, we look at data centre tiers, what they mean and why the higher the tier, the higher the cost and what this means for your business.

Data centre tiers is the method for rating the infrastructure of data centres, recognised by the data centre industry. The lesser the rating, the cheaper the service and potential increased vulnerability of your business. All hardware can fail, and it does, but depending on the ‘tier’ rating of your data centre, your business will suffer either some downtime, or none.

Tier 1

The lowest category of data centre, Tier 1 may be adequate for some businesses that are not critically affected by downtime.

Typically, a Tier 1 data centre houses a server plugged into the internet, but there are no spares kept onsite and the expectation is for some downtime to occur. If hardware breaks, spares need to be ordered. Downtime data for Tier 1 shows it is higher than any other tier.

Tier 2

Spares are kept onsite for Tier 2, but they are stored separately and require staff to manually locate and sort out the fix. Again, as with Tier 1, the expectation is for some downtime; less than Tier 1, but more than the higher tiers. Depending on your business model, this may not be critical to your operation.

Tier 3

For businesses that cannot risk significant downtime, Tier 3 and above is crucial.

Tier 3 ensures multiple power and connections, so that if one supply goes down there is always backup. But it’s not just a matter of two plugs, the power coming to the two plugs must be from two totally separate power distribution boards so that one fuse can't take both down. Likewise, the internet must be from two or more different providers so that if one is down the other is likely to be fine.

There are implications for the hardware too; dual powered equipment means there must be two sockets on the server so that if the server’s internal power supply unit fails, it will continue to run with the other. This kind of setup ensures too that if work is being carried on at the centre, and they have to turn supply off, nothing will go down.

Tier 4

Tier 4 means that every system must have a backup, even the building’s cooling and ventilation, as well as full battery backup in case of full power outage. Diesel generators must be kept onsite too in case of lengthy outages. And there must be seamless transition so that servers never go down, no matter what happens.

Another requirement for Tier 4, of which there is a high cost implication for businesses, is that servers are in their own secured room within the, already highly secure, data centre.

What you get at Cultrix

Anything less than Tier 3 or Tier 4 will have incidents of downtime, which is why every aspect of Cultrix cloud is Tier 4, except the requirement to have an exclusive server room. Cultrix servers are on the shared floor of the data centre where the level of security, both online and physical, is extremely high, and all backup and dual supply is firmly in place.

In addition, Cultrix servers are also backed up to a second data centre facility using our enterprise class backup infrastructure, and monitored 24/7.

It’s vital to the security and resilience of your business infrastructure to choose the right classification of data centre for your business. If you don’t already know, you can ask your service provider for proof of classification; an easy way to verify their answer is to ask them the name of the data centre and check it out on whatismyip.com.

Talk to our IT experts at Cultrix if you need any advice regarding business continuity and how to ensure your infrastructure is as secure as it can be. You may also find our post on why it’s important to use dedicated, rather than contended, servers helpful.

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