A data center is a physical location that houses specialized computing equipment and servers for the purpose of managing and accessing heavy amounts of data. A data center is also called a ‘computer room’. Any individual, organization, or body that needs huge data to be stored, transferred, created, or used for one purpose or another needs a data center. Data centers are usually owned by web hosting services for the purpose of handling the server needs of their clients. Some enterprises prefer the option of owning and maintaining their data centers.
A data center tier system represents a classification system for data centers. This classification is usually based on the type of equipment and infrastructure the data center has. These tiers are grouped and ranked according to how simple or complex the infrastructure is.
Data Center tiers are usually classified into one of any of the four (4) classifications as classified by the Uptime’s Institute tier classification system. This classification is an industry standard.
In classifying these data centers, the Uptimes Institute also takes into cognizance the IT operations reliability, and how tight their systems security is, among many other factors
Each data center’s classification system would be discussed below:
The tier 1 data center is the simplest and the lowest of all the data center classifications. It is mostly used by small businesses that carry out small-scale operations. The tier 1 data center has the following features:
Ranking from lowest to highest, the tier 2 data center facility comes second. It’s the next best after the tier 1 data center. The tier 2 data center facilities offer basically the same features as tier 1 with just a slight improvement of some features:
The tier 3 data center facility comes next after the tier 2 data center system. Many businesses today can run conveniently on a tier 3 data center facility. As expected, it’s a slight improvement from the tier 2 data center facility especially in uptime and redundancy and a mode sophisticated facility. It has the following features:
The tier 4 data center facility is the highest in the tier classification system. It has the most sophisticated infrastructure compared to other tiers and is used by very large companies with heavy reliance on data accessibility. The tier 4 data Center facility has the following features:
Businesses in today’s world need to maintain a certain level of online presence to drive brand visibility and to perform other functions. To achieve this, they would have to host their businesses on online hosting services. For the website to run, certain internet equipment like servers is required on-premise or off-premise.
Servers could be very difficult to maintain and would require some sort of specialized knowledge to operate. To avoid the expenses and trouble involved in maintaining servers, these businesses opt to choose a web hosting service to cater for their server needs for a fee.
These web hosting services have a data center that stores all their server equipment. These data centers are categorized into 4 tiers based on the kind of facilities they have, with tier 1 having the lowest facilities, and tier 4 having the most sophisticated ones.
Everyone wants a reliable data center to work with. They want to be assured of their data centers able to provide the best quality servers available. This is why it is very important for them to take great care in choosing the best datacenters that suit their needs based on the standard 4-tier data facility classification.