Tier Classification System

Loading
loading...

Tier Classification System

November 18, 2025
mike@standardsmichigan.com

No Comments
The Uptime Institute’s tier system classifies data centers into four levels based on performance, redundancy, and availability, from basic to fully fault-tolerant. A Tier I (basic capacity) facility has single paths for power and cooling, while Tier II adds some redundant components like UPS modules and generators. Tier III (concurrently maintainable) includes multiple, independent distribution paths, allowing for maintenance without taking the system offline. Tier IV (fault-tolerant) is the highest level, with 2N or 2N+1 redundancy to withstand single-failure points in critical systems.
Tier I: Basic capacity with a single path for power and cooling; requires downtime for maintenance.
Tier II: Adds some redundant capacity components (e.g., UPS, generators) to improve reliability over Tier I.
Tier III: “Concurrently maintainable,” meaning maintenance can be performed without interrupting operations due to multiple, independent distribution paths.
Tier IV: “Fault tolerant,” with a fully fault-tolerant infrastructure (2N or 2N+1) that can withstand any single-point failure.
The system focuses on the performance-based goals rather than specific technologies, and each tier builds upon the previous tier

Related:

Electrical Power Reliability

Power Distribution Reliability Indices

Transfer Equipment

Maintenance & Reliability of Campus Power Systems

Bibliography

Reliability Data Collection Dot Std 3006.8: Framework for Establishing Goals for New Data

493-2007 – IEEE Recommended Practice for the Design of Reliable Industrial and Commercial Power Systems 

University of Michigan Cloud Services

Stanford University Cloud Transformation

University of Texas at Austin Cloud Computing

McKinsey: Scaling bigger, faster, cheaper data centers with smarter designs

 

 

 

Henry Mancini Institute

November 17, 2025
mike@standardsmichigan.com
No Comments

This content is accessible to paid subscribers. To view it please enter your password below or send mike@standardsmichigan.com a request for subscription details.

English for Technical Professionals

November 17, 2025
mike@standardsmichigan.com
No Comments

IEEE English for Technical Professionals is a 14-hour online learning program designed to provide non-native English speakers with a working knowledge of English techniques and vocabulary that are essential for working in today’s technical workplace.

 

IEEE English for Technical Professionals

Electropedia: The World’s Online Electrotechnical Vocabulary

Standards January: Language

“All Applicable Standards”

November 17, 2025
mike@standardsmichigan.com
No Comments

From time to time we drill into representative design guidelines and specifications for facility classes that are present on educational campuses; including projects involving the spaces between buildings — i.e. water, pathway, power and telecommunication infrastructure.

We place particular emphasis on the “General Conditions” of these guidelines and specifications because up to 20 percent of a construction project may involve the cost of general conditions; depending upon how many disciplines are involved.

We find excesses in the General Conditions that tend to inflate contingency requirements but also shortcomings that design professionals, construction project managers and building service engineers* should know about.   Facility development units will likely want to tweak design and construction documents to harmonize with the latest changes in the codes and standards that govern the safety and sustainability agenda of the education facility industry.

Tulane University School of Architecture


Building services engineers are responsible for the design, installation, operation and monitoring of the technical services in buildings (including mechanical, electrical and public health systems, also known as MEP or HVAC), in order to ensure the safe, comfortable and environmentally friendly operation.

Building services engineers work closely with other construction professionals such as architects, structural engineers and quantity surveyors.

Building services engineers influence the architectural design of building, in particular facades, in relation to energy efficiency and indoor environment, and can integrate local energy production (e.g. façade-integrated photovoltaics) or community-scale energy facilities (e.g. district heating). Building services engineers therefore play an important role in the design and operation of energy-efficient buildings (including green buildings, passive houses and zero energy buildings.  uses. With buildings accounting for about a third of all carbon emissions] and over a half of the global electricity demand, building services engineers play an important role in the move to a low-carbon society; a prevailing sentiment among many educational settlements.


Update: 29 November 2024

French Onion Soup

November 16, 2025
mike@standardsmichigan.com
No Comments

Standards North Dakota Campus Master Plan 

Click image below for recipe

photograph of a bowl of french onion soup on a plate with two onions next to it

Click for Extension Service Full Playlist

North Dakota State University | Fargo County

Ralph Vaughan Williams “Sea Symphony”

November 16, 2025
mike@standardsmichigan.com

No Comments

Standards Michigan Central

This is his RVW’s first completed symphony and one of the earliest major choral symphonies in English music. Setting poetry from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, it explores the sea as both a literal and spiritual metaphor for exploration and human destiny. Premiered at the Leeds Festival, it signaled Vaughan Williams’s move toward a distinctly English symphonic voice, blending expansive orchestration with modal harmonies and visionary choral writing. The work’s significance lies in its ambition: it established him as a leading British composer and opened a new path for English symphonic and choral expression.

MORE

Sustainable Brewing

November 14, 2025
mike@standardsmichigan.com
, ,
No Comments

This content is accessible to paid subscribers. To view it please enter your password below or send mike@standardsmichigan.com a request for subscription details.

Theater Safety

November 14, 2025
mike@standardsmichigan.com
, ,
No Comments

“ I think that the theater is the initial glamorizer of thought; where it can be told – without too much disguise but without too much directness either – the secrets, and thereby its antipathies and sympathies – the secrets and the knowledge of the human heart…

…I think that makes the art of the theater as important as the doctor or the psychologist or the Minister…

…I think it’s vitally important that the world knows itself and I think the theater is one of the most immediate means of expression towards that end…”

– Sir Lawrence Olivier

Set design model by Marcel Jambon for an 1895 Paris production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Otello

Demand for live events in college towns — what is now called “entertainment content” — is gathering pace; owed somewhat to an older demographic that prefers expanded social interaction to the online entertainment offerings that the younger demographic prefers*.  We see an expansion of the market in the construction of architecturally astonishing buildings; though the circumstances of pandemic has changed everything.

Today our interest lies in the complex safety and sustainability characteristics of the physical infrastructure — with particular interest in the fire protection, environmental air and electrotechnologies required to make them safe and sustainable.   This facility class is far more complicated technologically and operates at significantly higher risk than, say, classrooms or office space.

The Entertainment Services and Technology Association is one of the first names in trade associations that support the ‘business of show business’ through networking, safe practices, education, and representation.  We follow the standards making activity of its technical committees and monitor public commenting opportunities.  ESTA releases markups of its consensus products for public comment at a fairly brisk pace on its standards development landing page:

ESTA Public Review Drafts

Transcripts of related standards:

2026 National Electrical Code Public Input Report CMP-15

2026 National Electrical Code Second Draft Report CMP-15

You may obtain an electronic copy at the link above, along with a comment form.  Send your comments to Karl Ruling, (212) 244-1505, standards@esta.org with an optional copy to psa@ansi.org).  We encourage our colleagues in school districts and in colleges and universities large and small; with responsibilities for the safety and sustainability of cultural resource properties, media centers, performance venues to participate in the ESTA technical standards development program.

Glorya Kaufman School of Dance / University of Southern California

We keep the ESTA suite on the standing agenda of our Lively Arts colloquia; open to everyone.   See our CALENDAR for the next online meeting.

Since the electrotechnologies for the lively arts have evolved into complex, interoperable systems we also collaborate with the IEEE Education & Healthcare Facilities Committee on technical specifics.  That committee meets online four times per month in European and American time zones.

“We’re all actors: We all play different roles in different situations.”

Marlon Brando

 

Issue: [Various]

Category: Electrical, Infotech, Lively Arts,

Colleagues: Mike Anthony, Christine Fischer, Mike Hiler, Nehad El-Sherif

ARCHIVE: ESTA


*More >>

State Capitals And College Towns: A Recipe For Success

Baby Boomers Are Retiring to College Towns

The original University of Michigan codes and standards advocacy enterprise interviewed an ESTA affiliate in 2015:


Entertainment Occupancies

Layout mode
Predefined Skins
Custom Colors
Choose your skin color
Patterns Background
Images Background
error: Content is protected !!
Skip to content