Many companies that call us for information ask us what "tier" we are.  The Uptime Institute has established a tiering system that helps companies classify and evaluate data centers and colocation facilities.  The tiering system focuses on a number of categories.

Most data center professionals are concerned with:

• Delivery paths
• Redundant components
• Available watts per square foot
• Raised floor availability and height
• Floor loading
• Utility voltage
• Downtime
• Available support staff

Most of these characteristics are focused on minimizing downtime. Rather than the Uptime Institute tiering system, many clients are now using an uptime service level as their criterion, such as 99.995% uptime, or "4 1/2 9’s."  That equates to 0.4 hours of downtime per year. 

The key components of a 99.995% uptime data center include two active electrical feeds to your equipment, concurrently maintainable generators, UPS and HVAC systems, along with multiple telecom carriers, often in a carrier neutral data center.

Other characteristics such as floor loading, and available watts address high-density enterprise data center implementations that are common in large data centers today.

Lifeline Data Centers builds facilities to be TIA-942 compliant data center facilities. We aim at 99.995% uptime which is an uptime level that can be compared Tier IV data center.  Lifeline does NOT maintain an Uptime Institute certification. 

If downtime is costly to your business, then you should be considering a tier IV data center. If your looking for an affordable colocation facility, take a closer look at Lifeline