The Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) have published TIA-942 for Data Center Standards. The TIA-942 publication have tiered the Data Centers into the following four categories by the levels of Availability, Redundancy and Downtime:

Tier 1 – Basic Data Center

• 99.671% Availability


• No redundancy


• Single path for power and cooling distribution


• May or may not have a raised floor, UPS, or generator


• Annual downtime 28.8 hours

Tier 2 – Redundant Components

• 99.741% Availability


• Redundant components


• Single path for power and cooling distribution


• Includes raised floors, UPS, and generators


• Annual downtime 22.0 hours

Tier 3 – Concurrently Maintainable

• 99.982% Availability


• Single path for power and cooling distribution


• Redundant components


• Includes raised floors, UPS and generators


• Annual downtime 1.6 hours

Tier 4 – Fault Tolerant

• 99.999% Availability


• Multiple active power and cooling distributions paths


• Includes raised floors, UPS and generator


• Multiple active distribution path

TIA-942 is a Data Center Standards publication developed by the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) to set guidelines for planning and building data centers, particularly with regard to cabling systems and network design. The standard deals with both copper and fiber optic media.

Disclaimer

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