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Tiers Program Publications

Tier Standard: Topology

The Uptime Institute has released the latest update of the Tier Standard: Topology effective 1 January 2018. This 2018 update to the Standard specification (previous update was dated 2012) is the result of more than five additional years of real-world data center experience and additional application notes associated with the use of newer technologies found in many recent data centers. The 2018 update to the Tier Standard : Topology reflects the experience drawn from organizations completing Uptime Institute’s Tier certification and additional experience gathered by Uptime Institute Professional Services during the conduct of its professional services portfolio. Mostly clarification to eliminate any ambiguity as well as providing additional context in nature, the 2018 update to the Tier Standard : Topology clarifies the intent of Uptime Institute regarding a number of topics, including; the need for on-site power generation, definitive ambient temperature ranges, a recommendation on communications entries, and makeup water for evaporative cooling systems.

Tier Standard: Operational Sustainability

The Uptime Institute Tier Standard: Operational Sustainability is an objective methodology for data center owners to align the facility management program with the specific Tier of installed site infrastructure in order to achieve the organization’s business objectives or mission imperatives. Tier Standard: Operational Sustainability establishes the behaviors and risks beyond the Tier Classification System (I, II, III, and IV) that impact long-term data center performance. Tier Standard: Operational Sustainability unifies site management behaviors with the Tier functionality of the site infrastructure.

Accredited Tier Designer Technical Paper Series: Engine-Generator Ratings

Accredited Tier Designer Technical Paper Series supplements Data Center Site Infrastructure Tier Standard: Topology by providing additional clarity on the Tier consequences of specific subsystems. An objective of the Tier Program is the consistent application of infrastructure availability concepts to facility systems supporting data center critical environments.

Accredited Tier Designer Technical Paper Series: Makeup Water

The Accredited Tier Designer Technical Paper Series supplements the Data Center Site Infrastructure Tier Standard: Topology by providing additional clarity on the Tier consequences of specific subsystems. An objective of the Tier Program is the consistent application of infrastructure availability concepts to facility systems supporting data center critical environments.

Accredited Tier Designer Technical Paper Series: Continuous Cooling

The Accredited Tier Designer Technical Paper Series supplements the Data Center Site Infrastructure Tier Standard: Topology by providing additional clarity on the Tier consequences of specific subsystems. An objective of the Tier Program is the consistent application of infrastructure availability concepts to facility systems supporting data center critical environments.

Tier Requirements for Power

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.

Resources

Annual outage analysis 2021

Avoiding downtime remains a top priority for all managers of critical infrastructure. But as technology changes, and as the demands placed on IT change, so do the types, frequency and impacts of outages, as well as the best practices in outage avoidance.

Data center security: Reassessing physical, human and digital risks

Data center operators routinely maintain multiple physical perimeters against intruders and regulate the activities of the people inside. However, cloud computing and increased remote monitoring and automation bring new security challenges. Human and digital vulnerabilities have expanded the attack surface for many data centers.

Renewable energy for data centers

Sustainability is becoming a key issue for data center operators. Investors, customers and legislators are increasingly demanding carbon emissions reporting and 100% renewable energy use. Organizations risk charges of greenwashing if purchased renewable energy certificates are the main or only component of sustainability strategies; many are now using instruments such as power purchase agreements to procure renewable energy for their operations. Some industry leaders are also adding large-scale battery deployments for energy storage.

The people challenge: Global data center staffing forecast 2021-2025

As the data center build-out continues across the globe, many more people will be needed to design, build and operate this critical infrastructure. The demand will exacerbate staffing shortages — but by how much? Uptime Institute has completed the first forecast of global data center workforce needs — by region, by data center type, and by education requirements. This report summarizes and analyzes its findings.

Five data center trends for 2021

Uptime Institute’s examination of some of the top trends in data centers in 2021 reveals a vibrant sector that is growing, especially around the edge, and increasingly embracing new innovations. It is also entering a phase of re-assessment; of infrastructure and service accountability, in terms of resiliency; and of material outcomes toward environmental sustainability.

The gathering storm: Climate change and data center resiliency

Extreme weather events have become significantly more common and more severe in recent years — a pattern likely to continue for many decades to come. This report discusses the implications for data center owners and operators.

Post-pandemic data centers

The COVID-19 pandemic will bring some long-term strategic changes to the management and day-to-day operations of data centers and mission-critical infrastructure services. The goal? To become more resilient to any future pandemics.

Annual outage analysis 2020

Uptime Institute’s examination of the outages that made media headlines in 2019 shows that failures are affecting all sectors and types of IT services. The frequency of outages is higher than ever, while the primary causes are increasingly shifting from physical data center infrastructure to software and IT systems.

Start With The End In Mind

When launched at the beginning of the design process, an operations-focused approach ensures that the enormous capital investment made in a data center will produce the most efficient returns possible.

Infographic: The Exorbitant Cost of Doing Nothing

Every day facilities waste money and resources just to keep up with business demands in the face of rising costs. Yet minimal investments in efficiency can help you rack up savings in the millions—or hundreds of millions. See how to start saving today.

Infographic: A Tale of Two Data Centers

Up to 30% of the country’s 12 million servers are potentially comatose – abandoned by application owners and users but still racked and running. But what does that really mean for a data center operation? What does each comatose or underutilized server really cost you, in data center facility power, cooling, capacity, and resources? In this infographic, we compare the cost of doing nothing with the benefits of taking action today. Learn how you can save millions and be a real world success story…and avoid becoming a cautionary tale.

Executive Handbook: Risk Management for IT Infrastructure

The "Risk Management for IT Infrastructure" Executive Handbook is intended to help IT leaders face the challenges of today's digital centric world of rapidly changing market requirements, complex customer and regulatory demands and growing technical complexity associated with physical and data security needs.

Comatose Server Decommissioning Starter Kit

Uptime Institute created a Starter Kit of useful tools to help organizations start their own disciplined decommissioning program.

Comatose Server Savings Calculator

The Comatose Server Savings Calculator helps you evaluate potential cost savings across multiple factors by shutting down comatose servers in your data center.

Top Ten Considerations for Data Center Design & Engineering RFPs

A Design Engineering Request for Proposal is the origination of your data center design, the operations program, and any Service Level Agreements (SLAs) whether internal or external. Taking care during this step will benefit your long-term operations success, which is the true ROI of your capital investment.

Sustaining Operational Effectiveness for the Long Term

The data center environment is never static, and budget, performance, and market pressures place ever-increasing demands on operating organizations. How can you tell if your business critical IT infrastructure is being run effectively to ensure reliability and minimize risk? Even the most robust design and facility systems won’t protect you from vulnerability to operating shortfalls. There are some important signs to look for and questions to ask to help assess where your organization stands, and actions you can take today to ensure operating standards up to par, preventing errors and downtime and optimizing the return on your IT assets.

Top Considerations for Addressing Data Center Facilities Management Risks

Meeting operational challenges in the data center requires organization, planning, and focus. This 7 page guide book addresses the top 14 considerations for addressing data center facilities management risks.

How to Develop a Data Center Training Program

The majority of data center outages are blamed on “human error” stemming from a lack of knowledge or procedural mistake. This 18 page guide helps data center facility managers and IT operations leaders build a robust data center training program from ideation to implementation.

Innovations in Data Center Power: Software-Defined Power and Energy Optimization

Software-defined power, like the broader software-defined data center, is about creating a layer of abstraction that makes it easier to continuously match power resources with changing data center needs. This 8-page report, produced by Uptime Institute Research in conjunction with 451 Research, investigates the business drivers, core technology and barriers to adoption of software-defined power in data centers.

Data Centers At The Edge

Edge computing is just that: Distributing computing and storage capabilities to the very edge of the network, be it the edge at an enterprise factory floor or a carrier point of presence, a cell tower or smart building. This Uptime Institute Research report, prepared in partnership with 451 Research, looks at the key uses cases, business drivers and enabling technologies behind Edge Computing.

Top Five Questions to Address for your 2018 Data Center Strategy

Uptime Institute's Vice President of North America, Matt Stansberry, outlines the top 5 questions you need to address in your 2018 data center strategy.

Balancing Life Safety, Infrastructure Investment, and Downtime

One-third of organizations allow maintenance activities on energized electrical equipment at voltage levels that could cause health or human-safety consequences. Accidents, including shock and arc flash, can derail data center operations and cause serious harm to workers and equipment. This report covers regulations around electrical safety in the workplace, how to assess the risk of working with energized electrical equipment and best practices to balance life safety, infrastructure investment, and downtime in your critical facilities.

Next-Generation Resiliency

The need for resiliency and the way it is achieved at both the data center and application levels is expected to change significantly as the IT world gradually moves to a more cloud-based, hybrid and distributed architecture. Advances in hybrid and cloud computing, containers and virtualization, DevOps, replication, distributed databases and global traffic management (GTM) are coinciding with huge investments in data center and network capacity, and a move toward greater use of software to intelligently manage workloads, traffic and resiliency. All of these are combining to create an architectural shift: from single-site vertical resiliency to distributed, replicated resiliency.

Case Study

Uptime Institute FORCSS Case Study 1

Uptime Institute FORCSS® is an original system to capture, compare, and prioritize the various impacts to the many IT deployment alternatives. FORCSS creates a language for effective communication; provides a basis for describing, comparing, and selecting alternatives; overcomes blind spots; and yields necessary and sufficient analysis to support executive decisions.

Case Study: Telefonica

Telefónica | Vivo achieves excellence in data center facility development and management and demonstrates its market leadership by being the first company in Latin America to earn all three Tier Certifications: Design Documents, Constructed Facility, and Operational Sustainability

Corporate Literature

Accredited Tier Designer

The Accredited Tier Designer (ATD) is a technically focused curriculum for the further education of the individuals responsible for data center design. ATD will provide design professionals with the technical Tier clarity to respond to their clients’ Tier mandates and reduce lost efforts in doing so.

Accredited Tier Specialist

Accredited Tier Specialist (ATS) is a curriculum and professional designation for the benefit of the individuals directly responsible for data center uptime and the experts that support them.

Data Center Risk Assessment

Uptime Institute’s Data Center Risk Assessment (DCRA) is a comprehensive review that examines both existing critical facility infrastructure and operations. It provides a thorough, unbiased assessment of a site, including achievements, risks, and determination of the ‘most likely’ Tier rating. The review includes recommendations for mitigation and remediation of any gaps in order to align the site’s infrastructure and operation with the business requirements.

Management & Operations Stamp of Approval

The Uptime Institute Management & Operations (M&O) Stamp of Approval validates the critical facilities management and operations practices of an existing data center.

Tier Certification

Uptime Institute is the only organization worldwide that Certifies data center designs, facilities, and operations to the Tier Classification System (I-IV) and Operational Sustainability criteria. Tier Certification is an unbiased, third-party validation of the Tier level that benefits both enterprise and third-party data centers. Tier Certifications have been awarded worldwide to corporations across all industries, governments, and universities.

Facility Management and Operations Advisory Services

Uptime Institute’s Facility Management and Operations (FMO) methodology helps data centers develop, implement, and sustain operating strategies and practices that ensure maximum uptime, optimize performance, and reduce risk and cost.

FORCSS Decision-Making Tool

Uptime Institute FORCSS is an original system to capture, compare, and prioritize the various impacts to the many IT deployment alternatives.

Accredited Operations Specialist

Accredited Operations Specialist (AOS) is a curriculum and professional designation for the benefit of critical facility operators directly responsible for data center uptime and the experts that support them.

Corporate Fact Sheet

Uptime Institute and the company’s Tier Standard has become the de facto standard for data center reliability, risk management, sustainability and efficiency, and the IT industry’s most trusted global standard for the design, build and operation of data centers. For over 30 years, Uptime has established industry-leading benchmarks for data center performance, resilience, sustainability and efficiency.

Surveys

2013 Data Center Industry Survey

The 2013 Uptime Institute Data Center Industry Survey provides an overview of global industry trends by surveying 1,000 data center operators and IT practitioners.

2014 Data Center Industry Survey

The 2014 Uptime Institute Data Center Industry Survey provides an overview of global industry trends by surveying 1,000 data center operators and IT practitioners.

2015 Data Center Industry Survey

The fifth annual Uptime Institute Data Center Industry Survey provides an overview of global industry trends by surveying 1,000 data center operators and IT practitioners.

2016 Data Center Industry Survey

The sixth annual Uptime Institute Data Center Industry Survey provides an overview of the major trends shaping IT infrastructure delivery and strategy.

2017 Data Center Industry Survey

The 2017 Uptime Institute Data Center Industry Survey provides an overview of global industry trends by surveying 1,000 data center operators and IT practitioners.

2018 Data Center Industry Survey

The eighth annual Uptime Institute Data Center Industry Survey provides an overview of the major trends shaping IT infrastructure delivery and strategy.

Journals

The Uptime Institute Journal, Volume 3

Uptime Institute conceived The Uptime Institute Journal in 2013 as a way to promote thought leadership, innovation, and proven methodologies of various disciplines and professions within the data center industry. Its mission is to showcase world-class projects, recognize individual- or team-level accomplishments, and further the industry at large. This publication is committed to senior-level, peer-to-peer knowledge transfer — expertise provided by the individuals responsible for development, execution, or oversight of major data center initiatives.

The Uptime Institute Journal, Volume 4

Uptime Institute conceived The Uptime Institute Journal in 2013 as a way to promote thought leadership, innovation, and proven methodologies of various disciplines and professions within the data center industry. Its mission is to showcase world-class projects, recognize individual- or team-level accomplishments, and further the industry at large. This publication is committed to senior-level, peer-to-peer knowledge transfer — expertise provided by the individuals responsible for development, execution, or oversight of major data center initiatives.

The Uptime Institute Journal, Volume 5

Uptime Institute conceived The Uptime Institute Journal in 2013 as a way to promote thought leadership, innovation, and proven methodologies of various disciplines and professions within the data center industry. Its mission is to showcase world-class projects, recognize individual- or team-level accomplishments, and further the industry at large. This publication is committed to senior-level, peer-to-peer knowledge transfer — expertise provided by the individuals responsible for development, execution, or oversight of major data center initiatives.