North American Network Operators Group
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Re: TIA-942 Datacenter Standardization

  • From: Deepak Jain
  • Date: Wed Aug 31 23:08:41 2005 




We have already been asked about where our datacenters fit in with the
TIA942 spec in several RFPs! It does cover some good topics, but it also
leaves out the design and structure of many things which are far more
likely to cause an outage than the copper and fiber physical plants.





Yeah... and it introduces/codifies the concept of "tiers" of
datacenters... Yet, its possible to be have "tier 4" access to
telecommunications while being a "tier 1" datacenter to operate those
telecommunications, or vice versa.



What bothers me as significantly as this tier stuff is that
redundancies, procedures, staffing, testing, policies are only
mentioned, but not actually discussed (such as the why's, or how to test
for the condition). They refer to specific technologies... like "RAID"
as an application for a "tier 4" facility. They mention colocation and
internet data centers, but don't discuss or even address how your
facilities survivability is not fundamentally affected by non-carrier
grade equipment being installed by customers -- yet, not surprisingly,
the "tier 4" definition specifically talks about all the equipment
installed in the datacenter.



There is lots of hand waving... like "beware the EPO".



And yet, it doesn't discuss how facilities like Exodus's NJ facility
that had all the power outages or Equinix/Ashburn and Equinix/Chicago
which presumably meet at least, the Tier-3 specifications by design...
still fail when they are implemented poorly. That 99.99% and above
availability have more to do with maintenance and procedures than the
equipment you installed initially.



Its more of a document I'd expect to spend a ridiculous some of money to
have a consultant produce, not someone who should know better. Great
college guide book to discuss "issues" though.



Deepak Jain

AiNET