Data Centers & Networking

An article released by DevOps in 2015 estimated that Fortune 1000 companies average a total cost of downtime between $1.25 to $2.5B per year (Shimel, 2015). ME’s Tier I infrastructure is not adequately fulfilling our rapidly growing organization. Last year alone, we experienced 10 outages to our ERP system, dramatically reducing our profits. A proposal to upgrade from our Tier I data center to a Tier III solution is essential to our business goals, and could save the company $24M per year after implementation.

The Tier III data center has 99.98% availability; and consists of “multiple active power and cooling distribution paths” to allow all components redundant capability, it’s also “concurrently maintainable (Hamilton, 2016).” Preventative maintenance can be performed for “each capacity component and element…without impacting” the integrity “of the critical environment (Uptime Institute Porfessional Services, 2009-2012).” The UPS systems, “redundancy, modularity, and live system maintenance” allows “incremental racking for capacity growth and scalability”, that can be “repaired/maintained while on-line”, are “hot-swappable”, and are capable to send alert notifications (Kohler Company, 2015).

Implementing the Tier III data center will cost the business $35M and take a year to complete due to electrical, heating, and cooling infrastructure restructuring. However, it will ensure productivity is not loss due to a site communication, network, or power outage. The project forecast a net benefit of $13.2M after 3 years. Thereafter, it will decrease the downtime cost by $24M per year.

Works Cited

Hamilton, M. B. (2016, July 7). A Refresher on Data Center Tiers. Retrieved from EzeCastle Integration: https://www.eci.com/blog/40-a-refresher-on-data-center-tiers.html

Kohler Company. (2015, November 16). The UPS role in the Uptime Institute’s Tier Classification System. Retrieved from Uninterruptible Power Supplies Ltd: http://www.upspower.co.uk/the-ups-role-in-the-uptime-institutes-tier-classification-system/

Shimel, A. (2015, February 11). The real cost of downtime. Retrieved from DevOps – Where the world mets DEVEOPS: https://devops.com/real-cost-downtime/

Uptime Institute Porfessional Services, L. (2009-2012). Data Center Site Infrastructure Tier Standard: Topology. New York, New York, United States.