Myths and Realities of Data Center Certification

While there can be a lot riding on the level of certification a data center achieves from the Uptime Institute, there’s also a lot confusion as to what types of data centers need to be certified to what level.

At the Data Center World conference in National Harbor, Maryland, this September, Steven Shapiro, mission critical practice lead for Morrison Hershfield, a provider of data center consulting services, will dispel many of the myths associated with gaining Tier III and IV certifications for high-availability data centers. He’ll also explain under what circumstances it’s actually worth making the effort to gain those certifications.

Shapiro said that given the fact that its not clear what is actually required to gain a Tier III or IV certification, the guidelines published by the Uptime Institute are naturally subject to a lot of interpretation. For the most part, he said, the only organizations that need to gain these level of certification are finanical services firms or government organizations that need to able to prove they did everything possible to guarantee availability of their data centers.

In fact, Shapiro said, the first thing any data center operator needs to ask when it comes to attaining a certification is how much actual financial risk do the application workloads running in that enviroment actually represent. Once that’s determined, data center operators should proceed to make the effort to get their data center environments certified as a Tier III or IV, but only when the time and effort required to attain those certifications adds meaningful value to the business.

For more information, sign up for Data Center World National Harbor, which will convene in National Harbor, Maryland, on September 20-23, 2015, and attend Steven Shapiro’s session titled “Myths and Realities about Designing High Availability Data Center.”