What is Data Centre? Which tier (1,2,3,4) is right for your business?

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What is Data Centre - Which tier (1,2,3,4) is right for your business

Every day, we check emails, post our latest updates to various social media platforms. Some of us even manage our personal blog or website.

Have you ever wondered what is behind all these online activities? When you post or upload something online, where does the data go?

The answer is Data Centre.

What is a Data Centre?

A data centre or data center is a facility composed of networked computers and storage. Companies, big or small, use the facility to organize, process, store and distribute large amounts of data.

Enterprises usually rely heavily on the applications, services, and data contained in the data centre, making it the focus and key asset of their daily operations.

Data Centre Tier Ratings. How to choose the right tier for your business?

When looking for a data centre, it’s important to understand these ratings because they can provide you with uptime guidance, and uptime determines how long the data centre can be fully operational.

Uptime Institute‘s rating began in the mid-1990s. This is a white paper, “Classification Defines Site Infrastructure Performance”. The purpose is to outline the standards for data centre design and investment.

Since then, these ratings have been helping data centres achieve high-quality levels to ensure uptime.

Data centres can be divided into 4 tiers. Each tier has increasing requirements.

Tier 1 Data Centre

Small businesses usually take advantage of the requirements of Tier 1 data centres, which have the following characteristics:

  • 99.671% Uptime
  • Zero redundancy
  • 28.8 hours of annual downtime
  • If you are a small business, tier 1 may be ideal for you. This is a cost-effective solution.
  • Although tier 4 data centres do not have the functions of large centres, they have generators or backup cooling systems.

Tier 2 Data Centre

The benefits offered by Tier 2 facilities include:

  • 99.749% Uptime
  • Partial redundancy in power and cooling
  • 22 hours of annual downtime

Tier 2 data centres are for small and medium enterprise customers. It is more efficient than the level II system. Secondary providers can also handle more customers.

Companies whose network traffic matches small businesses are best suited for this level. In most cases, it is much cheaper than Tier 3.

Tier 3 Data Centre

Large enterprises use tier 3 data center specifications and have the following characteristics:

  • 99.982% uptime (Tier 3 uptime)
  • N+1 fault-tolerant
  • 72-hour power outage protection
  • 1.6 hours of annual downtime

Companies that use Tier 3 providers are usually growing companies or companies that are larger than the average small and medium-sized enterprise. Most data centre companies ranked by the Uptime Institute have a Class 3 ranking.

The tier 3 also has lower charges than the tier 4. If you have a budget constraint, you can choose tier 3 and expand to higher levels in the future.

Tier 4 Data Centre

Tier 4 data center certification usually provides services for enterprise companies using the following guarantees and benefits:

  • 99.995% uptime per year
  • Zero single points of failure
  • 2N+1 fully redundant infrastructure
  • 96-hour power outage protection
  • 26.3 minutes of annual downtime

Tier 4 is considered enterprise-level services. If you need to host mission-critical servers, tier 4 data centres are for you. The tier 4 data center can ensure the safety of your business, including taking care of mechanical failure.

It offers complete fault tolerance so that your business will not be slowed down by any issues.

Tier 4 colocation is definitely the most expensive option. This is why this level is dominated by international brands with consistently high levels of traffic or processing demand.

Exabytes Tier 3 Data Centre

Exabytes’ second data center in Singapore, Rack Central 1 is located within the central Data Centre zone in the heart of Singapore at Tai Seng Drive.

It is a carrier-class Tier 3 Data Center housed just meters away from a Global Switch Carrier Aggregation Data Centre.

Rack Central 1 houses close to 60 multinational customers, and more than 10 local and international telcos. With a capacity of 1000 racks, it is designed to specifications of PUE of 1.8 and offers Tier 3 equivalent power, cooling and telecommunications services designed to TIA-942 standards.

RC1 offers a full suite of colocation services ranging from Nano DC to manage cloud hosting, basic co-lo racks to fully customizable cages and suites.

Availability choices are effectively accessible with this carrier-neutral data centre with multiple direct dark fibre connectivity into Global Switch and Equinix.

This enables Exabytes to have access to over 500 global and local network operators and additionally On-Net data centre connectivity to other key data centres around the region.

Furthermore, RC1 is TVRA assessed and ISO 23001 BCM certified. This integrated service data centre is not only ready to host the production IT but it’s also designed as a secondary DR/BCP site.

With space fitted out and ready to deploy up to 120 seats BCP seats (customizable up to 1000+ seats), the data centre is fully equipped to manage services for annual BCP/DRP testing.

Know more about Exabytes Malaysia Data Center at Cyberjaya.

Visit Exabytes Today!

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