A four tier system that provides a simple and effective means for identifying different data center site infrastructure design topologies. The Uptime Institute’s tiered classification system is an industry standard approach to site infrastructure functionality addresses common benchmarking standard needs. The four tiers, as classified by The Uptime Institute include the following:
- Tier 1: composed of a single path for power and cooling distribution, without redundant components, providing 99.671% availability.
- Tier II: composed of a single path for power and cooling distribution, with redundant components, providing 99.741% availability
- Tier III: composed of multiple active power and cooling distribution paths, but only one path active, has redundant components, and is concurrently maintainable, providing 99.982% availability
- Tier IV: composed of multiple active power and cooling distribution paths, has redundant components, and is fault tolerant, providing 99.995% availability.