Vodacom Tier 4 DC claims false
The data centre industry in South Africa is becoming increasingly competitive, with new entrants like Neotel and Vodacom Business taking on more established players like Internet Solutions, Verizon Business and Telkom.
One of the biggest selling points of a data centre is the reliability and robustness of the facility. An uptime exceeding 99.9% has become the industry standard, but to ensure this uptime fully redundant and very robust systems are needed.
Data centre tier classification
Comparing data centres on a multitude of different criteria can be resource intensive and time consuming. To simplify the process a four tier classification system was designed by The Uptime Institute to provide an easy way to benchmark facilities and identify the different data center site infrastructure design specifications.
The four tiers, as classified by The Uptime Institute, include the following (courtesy of Webopedia.com):
- Tier 1: composed of a single path for power and cooling distribution, without redundant components, providing 99.671% availability.
- Tier II: composed of a single path for power and cooling distribution, with redundant components, providing 99.741% availability
- Tier III: composed of multiple active power and cooling distribution paths, but only one path active, has redundant components, and is concurrently maintainable, providing 99.982% availability
- Tier IV: composed of multiple active power and cooling distribution paths, has redundant components, and is fault tolerant, providing 99.995% availability.
To be able to offer prospective clients a Tier 4 data centre facility with 99.995% availability is a great selling point, and may even be a deal clincher in some cases. It was therefore with great excitement that Vodacom Business in November 2008 announced that the “Vodacom Business Data Centre is classified as a Tier 4 data centre”.
“The Data Centre is fully redundant and robust: built and designed on an N + N principle. Cabling to all secure cabinets allow for 10Gig Copper, 10Gig Multimode Optic Fibre and 10Gig Single Mode Fiber thus enabling exceptional user experience free from bandwidth bottlenecks,” Vodacom Business said in a press statement.
“The Vodacom Business Data Centre is classified as a Tier 4 data centre, which is designed to host mission critical computer systems, with fully redundant subsystems and compartmentalised security zones controlled by biometric access control methods.”
The Tier 4 Data Centre claim was reiterated by Vodacom CEO Pieter Uys during the company’s interim results presentation in November last year when he informed investors of the company’s “new 1,000m2 Tier 4 data centre” which was launched in Johannesburg.
This claim by Vodacom is however false. To qualify as a Tier 4 data centre one must have at least two active electricity supplies from two independent providers – something which is not possible in South Africa as Eskom is the country’s only electricity provider.
This means that while many data centres in South Africa are built to very high specifications, the absence of an alternative, independent electricity supplier make it impossible to qualify as a Tier 4 data centre. Any claim of 99.995% availability should also be scrutinized in terms of the data centre providers’ infrastructure capabilities and electricity supplies.
Vodacom responds
Vodacom confirmed that Vodacom Business can not attain a Tier 4 Data Centre rating. “We built our facilities according to the Tier 4 specification as far as practically possible i.e. we use Tier 4 as the foundation to design our data centres. However, we cannot attain this rating because in RSA we cannot get dual utility feeds from Councils/Eskom. As such the data centre has not been certified as a Tier 4 data centre,” said Vodacom’s Dot Field.
Vodacom Business head Wally Beelders explains that the need for two independent electricity providers is the only requirement which keeps the Vodacom Business facility from qualifying as a Tier 4 Data Centre. Beelders added that while the Vodacom Business data centre relies on electricity from a single Eskom sub-station, there are two independent feeds from two transformers within the substation to serve the facility.
It is further understood that Vodacom CEO Pieter Uys’ statements about the company’s new Tier 4 data centre refers to the specifications of the data centre build rather than the classification of the data centre according to The Uptime Institute’s requirement.
Beelders said that despite the fact that their hosting facility does not strictly meet all the requirements of a Tier 4 data centre, he is confident of 99.995% site availability typically associated with Tier 4 facilities. Beelders pointed out that their UPS and generator requirements exceed typical Tier 4 data centre specifications which partly compensates for the lack of two independent electricity suppliers.
Vodacom Business has not applied for official data centre certification yet, but this is something Beelders said they are keen do pursue in future. The Vodacom Business head said that he is confident that their facility will qualify as a Tier 3 Data Centre or even a Tier 3.5 facility if such certifications are handed out.
Vodacom Business Data Centre discussion
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