On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 1:20 PM, Tomas L. Byrnes<tomb@byrneit.net> wrote:
This begs the question of what basic parameters should be for a "carrier hotel" or co-lo. [...] The old NEBS standards were too much of a straightjacket.
Tomas, There is a useful standard: ANSI/TIA-942. It offers specifications for four tiers of data centers ranging from tier 1 (a basic data center with no redundancy) to tier 4 (fully fault tolerant). http://www.tiaonline.org/standards/catalog/search.cfm?standards_criteria=TIA... (the 2005 one) Judging from http://www.techlinks.net/community/articles/article/1-article-submission-for... there's even research that projects what sort of annual downtime you can expect for each of the tiers described by the standard. When I walk into a data center, I make a habit of asking which tier they achieve, at least for the HVAC and electrical systems. And then I ask to see the components which the tier claim says they should have. Regards, Bill Herrin -- William D. Herrin ................ herrin@dirtside.com bill@herrin.us 3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/> Falls Church, VA 22042-3004