Different Tiers of Data Centres

 Data Centre is the latest buzzword in the rapidly developing world of technology. Most of us have come across this word but not all of us know what it exactly refers to. In this blog, we aim to provide comprehensive information on data centres, including its tiers.

What is a Data Centre?

Data Centres are physical facilities, such as buildings, groups of buildings or even a dedicated space inside a building, which are used by companies for housing their critical applications and data. A data centre is used to house computer systems and their associated components, with regard to storage systems and telecommunications. Such a facility consists of a network of storage and computing resources that serve the purpose of delivering shared applications and data.

The main components of any data centre are servers, routers, switches, firewalls, application-delivery controllers and storage systems. These facilities are meant for securing resources related to Information Technology and for ensuring the least amount of downtime. Data centres help to attain the following:

• Efficient storage and management of data

• Decrease in barriers in the context of internal operations

• Increased data security

• Centralized management for better decision making

Every data centre is well-equipped with certain essential components. These are network infrastructure, computing resources and storage infrastructure. Network infrastructure is meant for connecting physical and virtual servers, data centre’s services, storage, etc., to the end users. Computing resources (servers) are used in the processing of applications. Storage infrastructure stores and manages data in a secure manner.

The operations of data centres entail the workflows and the systems which are needed for running these facilities. Installation and maintenance of network resources, power and cooling related systems’ monitoring and ensuring the security of data centres are part of data centre operations.

Enterprise Data Centres, Managed Services Data Centres, Colocation Data Centres and Cloud Data Centres are the main types of data centres. Certain factors, such as the computing and storage technologies that have been used, the number of owner organizations, energy efficiency, the way in which data centres fit into the topology of other data centres, etc., determine the classification of data centres. Let us elaborate on it.

Enterprises own, build and operate Enterprise Data Centres. Such data centres are usually housed on corporate campuses and are optimized for the end users. Managed Services Data Centres are managed by third parties. Businesses using such data centres lease the required infrastructure rather than purchasing it. In a Colocation Data Centre, space is rented in a data centre by a business. Such a data centre is located off the business’ premises. This type of a data centre hosts the infrastructure, whereas the business provides all the components, such as servers, firewalls, etc., and manages these components. A particular cloud services provider hosts the applications and data in a Cloud Data Centre, which is an off-premise data centre.

Various Tiers of Data Centres

Data centres can be easily classified into four tiers. These tiers are part of a system which serves the purpose of indicating consistently the specific types of data centre infrastructure. In the tier system of data centres, Tier 1 data centres have the simplest infrastructure, whereas Tier 4 data centres are the most complex in terms of infrastructure, which makes such data centres the most preferred choice for most of the enterprises. Every subsequent tier contains all the components of the tier/tiers that are lower than it in the hierarchy. Let us describe each of these four tiers individually.

• Tier 1 Data Centres – These are usually used by small-sized businesses and do not have any assured built-in redundancies for ensuring optimal uptime. The average annual downtime for such data centres is 28.8 hours.

• Tier 2 Data Centres – Certain redundancies are introduced in these data centres by the colocation providers. Partial redundancies are usually built in, to ensure the availability of cooling and power for supporting operations. The downtime is approximately 22 hours in a single year for these data centres.

• Tier 3 Data Centres – Data centres that are part of Tier 3, ensure enhanced protection against issues related to power and cooling. These facilities use N+1 fault tolerance to ensure up to 72 hours of protection against a power outage. Tier 3 data centres’ annual downtime is 1.6 hours.

• Tier 4 Data Centres – These data centres provide an annual uptime of 99.995%. Their downtime is as low as 26.3 minutes in a year. Every Tier 4 data centre has 2n+1 redundant infrastructure to assure 96 hours of protection against a power outage.

Before we conclude, it needs to be mentioned that HTS Hosting, which is globally popular as the best Website Hosting Company, owns a fully-equipped data centre that contains its powerfully configured web servers. HTS Hosting operates from its state-of-the-art data centre to deliver top-tier performance and outstanding quality of service through its affordably priced services.

Source: https://www.htshosting.org/knowledge-base/technology/323/different-tiers-of-data-centres