To be or not to be… comments on Data Center certification – Part 2

As I mentioned in the previous post, the level of reliability of a data center (objective Tier) is defined after a risk assessment based on the impact that the interruption of the data center would have on business operations, and in the case of a corporate data center, the risk is assumed by the owner or operator of the data center.
Once a design has been developed based on a Tier objective, it is recommended that it undergoes a third party review to validate that all criteria associated with the defined Tier have been addressed.
This review, performed by a specialized entity such as the Uptime Institute, is called a Design Certification.
A data center with a Design Certification already has a recipe for implementation.
The equipment and facility specifications are detailed in the deliverables of the design phase.

Carrying out a design and certification process requires the leadership of a team of professionals with the technical and management skills to carry out the project tasks, taking into account the requirements and constraints defined in an ad hoc project charter, I recommend following a project management framework such as those proposed by the PMI Project Management standards, and more specifically in telecommunications or information technology projects, the BICSI TPM framework, also in this development phase I recommend using agile practices.

In general, the actors in this phase of the project are the owner, who is the main stakeholder and whose participation is key, as well as a project manager, who carries all the burden of management and administrative tasks, a certified professional in charge of technical leadership, a multidisciplinary team to see the different specialties (information technology, telecommunications, electrical power, air conditioning, security, fire, automation, etc.).

If you want to know more about certification, I invite you to subscribe and stay tuned for the third part of this publication.