A data center is a centralized physical facility that houses and operates the enterprise's back-end IT systems and data stores, such as mainframes, servers, and databases. The data center standards and guidelines establish the minimum requirements and best practices for establishing, operating, and maintaining a data center system. The standards are developed with assistance from specialized organizations like the Telecommunication Industry Association or the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Some of the essential data center guidelines and standards are listed below.
EN 50600 Series
A set of international data center standards that is frequently updated is the EN 50600 series. This set of specifications, which focuses on IT cable and network design, is mainly based on the Tier Standard of the Uptime Institute and includes several infrastructure redundancies and dependability components.
Uptime Institute
This advisory panel provides guidelines for enhancing the crucial data center infrastructure's functionality, efficacy, and dependability. The Uptime Institute created the Tier Classification System to analyse different data center facilities in terms of possible site infrastructure efficiency or uptime.
Tier I - Basic Capacity.
Tier II - Redundant Capacity.
Tier III - Concurrently Maintainable.
Tier IV-Fault Tolerant.
ANSI/TIA 942-A 2014
It is a data center infrastructure standard. In this data center standards, the main emphasis is on concepts for redundancy and dependability in IT cable and network infrastructure. It is based on the Tier Standard of the Uptime Institute. TIA chose the term "Rated" instead of "Tiers" in response to UI's request that TIA discontinues referring to reliability levels using the Tier system.
ISO/IEC 24764 Information Technology
This international standard, based on both TIA-942 and EN 50173-5, outlines the cabling that should be used in data centers. It includes data center-specific information and ISO/IEC 11801 cabling specifications.
ANSI/BICSI 002-2014
It is a standard for designing and implementing best practices in data centers. This standard, which serves as a design and operating manual for data centers, addresses the design, building, commissioning, protection, management, and upkeep of data centers along with the cabling infrastructure, pathways, and spaces.
ASHRAE 90.4-2016
Recommendations for data center design, building, operation, and maintenance are included in this standard. The utilisation of on-site and off-site renewable energy sources is also emphasised in this standard, which also provides thermal standards that outline cooling best practices and temperature ranges that promote reliability and efficiency.
The Green Grid
This non-profit, open industry group comprising utility providers, technology vendors, end users, and decision-makers works to boost the efficiency of IT and data center resources globally.
The PUE technique, which measures energy efficiency in data centers by comparing the total energy used by the data center with the energy used by active equipment, is also credited to this group.
The Bottom Line
Standards are the technical guidelines or rules that are intended to be followed. In the blog, we have discussed some data center standards and guidelines that must be followed. These standards and guidelines set the minimum criteria for developing, running, and maintaining a data center system.
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