Question 1

Answer:
Senior Management also anticipates the data center to be operational 99.982 percent of
time through the year, with downtime of no more than 1.6 hours annually. As a senior project
manager of PTM’s, and to meet the expectation of senior management team, I decided and
suggested to implement/built Tier-3 datacenter for PTM’s. The tier 3 datacenter can meet the
expectation of the senior management and is more productive and cost-effective.
The datacenter tier classification is given below.
Tier-1 = Availability – 99.671 % and downtime 28.8 hour per year
Tier-2 = Availability – 99.741 % and downtime 22 hour per year
Tier-3 = Availability – 99.982 % and downtime 1.6 hour per year
Tier-4 = Availability – 99.995 % and downtime 0.438 hour per year
The datacenter tiers are standardized ranking system that indicates the reliability of the datacenter
infrastructure. This classification ranks facilities from 1 to 4, 1 is being the worst and 4 is the best
performance level.
Tier-3 datacenter is a concurrently maintainable facility with multiple distribution path for power
and cooling. Unlike tier-1 and tier-2, a tier-3 datacenter facility does not require a total shutdown
during maintenance or equipment replacement.
A tier-3 datacenter required all the component present in tier-1 and tier-2 datacenter, but these
facilities must also have N+1 availability.
- “N” refers to the necessary capacity to support IT load.
- “+1” stands for an extra component for backup purpose.
N+1 redundancy ensures an additional component starts operating if the primary elements run into
a failure or the staff removes the parts of planned maintenance. The diagram of the tier-3 datacenter
infrastructure is shown below.

Advantages of Tier-3 datacenter

- 99.982 Uptime
- No more than 1.6 hour of downtime per year
- N+1 fault tolerance provides at least 72 hours of power outage
- Keeps your data safe and secure from the unauthorized and unethical activities
- Power packed arrangement to deal with undesirable case such as component failure, power
fluctuation, and catastrophes.
- All the most important equipment such as server, network devices, and telecommunication
devices are dual powered to conquer uncertain causes.
 In terms of required effectiveness, efficiency and infrastructure, tier-3 datacenter is more
productive and cost-effective.
Disadvantages of Tier-3 datacenter
It is very costly and requires more time to implement.

Question
Provide two reasons why most companies are preferring to outsource their data center operations.
1. Reduced costs
2. Access external resources
Reduced costs: - The main reason why most companies outsource their data center is to control
cost. A managed server hosting can get a rid of large-scale data center investment. Through
outsourcing, a data center can be expended on an as-need basis, instead of investing in the entire
expansion at once.
Access external resources: - Outsourcing a data center, will give your business access to leverage
equipment, processes and people who are not available to you internally. Businesses can get
access to skilled data center professional, without having to recruit individual full-time experts in
power, cooling, security or networking.

Question
7 Datacenter requirements
1. Availability: Availability of resource as and when required.
2. Security: Establish policies, procedures, and control measures which prevents unauthorize
access of information.
3. Capacity: Adequate resources to efficiently store and process large and increasing amounts
of information.
4. Scalability: The ability to add computer system, new application, database etc. without
interrupting business operation.
5. Performance: Data that is deliver quickly and with low latency.
6. Data integrity: Data is store and retrieve exactly as it was received.
7. Manageability: Easy, flexible, and integrated management.
Question
Data center essential design strategies
1. Make it Robust
Your datacenter has to be reliable.
Safeguarding your company most essential equipment and application.
Datacenter infrastructure must have depth.
- Standby power supply
- Redundant network
The datacenter infrastructure must be configured so there is no single component or feature
that make it vulnerable.
2. Make it Modular
To achieve this uniform infrastructure, design the room in interchangeable segment.
Modularity keeps your datacenter infrastructure simple and scalable. It also provides
redundancy on a smaller scale as standby system.

3. Make it Flexible
Datacenter are not static, so their infrastructure should not be either.
Build infrastructure system using component that are easily changeable and moveable.

4. Standardize
Make the datacenter a consistence environment. This provides stability for the server and
networking equipment it houses, and increase its usability.

5. Promote good habits

Data center should be engineered to encourage behavior. Datacenter users are busy people.
They are looking for fastest solution to their problem.
Question
IT space of Datacenter
1. Entrance Room (ER)
- The entrance room is the interface between the access provider and the data center structure
cabling.
- It houses the separation of hardware and is outside of the computer room for security
purpose.

2. Main Distribution Area (MDA)

- The main distribution area is hub of the cabling system and may be located in the computer
room.
- The MDA includes the cross-connect and may include the horizontal cross connect if the
equipment they serve is nearby.
- The MDA includes the core router, core LAN and SAN switches.

3. Horizontal Distribution Area (HDA)

- The horizontal distribution area is the space where the horizontal cross-connect resides.
- The HDA is the main transition point between backbone and horizontal cabling and houses
the LAN, SAN and KVM switches that connects to the active equipment.

4. Zonal Distribution Area (ZDA)

- The zone distribution area is used in large computer room that need additional
configuration flexibility between the HDA and equipment.
- The ZDA houses only passive equipment.

5. Equipment Distribution Area (EDA)

- The equipment distribution area is the space allocated for racks and cabinets and end
equipment, including computer system and telecommunication equipment.
- These areas do not include the telecommunication rooms, entrance rooms, MDAs and
HDAs.
Question- Fire Suppression System
Fire Suppression systems are designed to extinguish fire, or at the least prevent them from
spreading. They work by dispersing water or chemical at the site of a potential fire when a heat
sensor detects sign of emergent fire and some system can manually activate. The fire suppression
system should include the following components
- The fire detection system detects the actual fire
- An unmistakable fire alarm that includes both the high-volume noise and flashing lights
- Portable fire-extinguisher placed in multiple critical location
- An emergency-power-off switch
- The actual fire suppression agent that won’t destroy or damage the equipment.

Component of EDS
Electrical Distribution System are an essential part of the electrical power system. The electrical
distribution system used in database are listed below
1. Switchgear
2. Switchboard
3. Generator
4. PDU

1. Switchgear
- Used mostly for service entrance and substation
- Medium voltage and low voltage
- High short circuit rating
- Usually used on primary side of UPS

2. Switchboard
- Used most for load distribution near the load
- Usually used on the secondary side of UPS

3. Generator
- Converting rotating mechanical power into the electrical power
- Usually, three phase power
- Diesel engine are common for datacenter applications
- The primary advantage of using diesel engine generator is the ability to independently
supply electricity, acting the backup power solution
Tier-2 Network Architecture
Two-tier, referred as edge and core layer, or fat-tree or spine-leaf architecture. The distinctive
feature of this architecture is that, for any switches the number of downlinks is equal to the number
of uplinks. A spine-leaf architecture is a datacenter network topology that consist of two switching
layer spine and leaf.
- Leaf: - The leaf layer consists of access switches that aggregate traffic from servers and
connect directly into the spine or network core – typically affixed top of rack or end of rack
and connects directly into the spine or network core.
- Spine switches interconnect all leaf switches in a full-mesh topology.
However, this means that the number of ports would have to vary from switch to switch. In addition
to higher performance, spine-leaf topologies provide better scalability. If you want to increase the
capacity of switch you can add or connect spine switch to every leaf.
Spine switches are very high throughput, low latency and port-dense switches that have direct
speed (40 to 400 Gbps) connections to each leaf switch,
A leaf switch is typically used as a TOR switch. Leaf switches are very similar to traditional TOR
switches in that they are often 24 or 48 port 1, 10 or 40 Gbps access layer connections.