In the Asia Pacific or developing countries like India, the primary reasons behind data center players not going for such certification include high cost and the need to ensure fine details to pass the validation process. Since this certification also requires huge capital investment by data center operators, many opt for TCDD but do not further apply for TCCF.
Additionally, it is a highly rigorous process. Unless the design has been commissioned by an experienced team that is aware of the requirement of the Uptime Institute, most of the data centers in India or globally will not pass the tests.
There are examples of large data centers that have either not attempted to go for Uptime certifications or not gone beyond design certifications (TCDD). And even if they tried their hands on TCCF, they have failed the tests (due to non-adherence to Tier IV design during the actual execution) despite being into data center operations for many years.
Having said that, if a large data center, hosting critical applications of its customers, is not undertaking a thorough real-time testing against all possible failures (and ideally not getting outcome-based certification like TCCF), its continuity of operations and supposed high uptime is a matter of being on the right side of luck and probability and not because of a deterministic action – of a good design, execution, and testing.
Raising the bar
Under normal circumstances, the Uptime Institute team has not cleared TCCF certification in a single attempt. Every data center undergoes the testing at least twice, and even post that; they don’t get certified. But for the first time in their history, a data center has cleared testing in the first attempt, and that too virtually.
Most of the earlier data centers were never designed in accordance with Uptime Institute certification. However, with Yotta setting the benchmark and taking the bar high, and the entry of top-class data center operators in India, there are hopes that data centers in India shall go for this kind of certification to deliver the best to their global end customers.
When a data center’s design is scrutinised, assessed, and certified by experts like Uptime Institute and the fact that the entire installation and operation is also certified by them, it results in the highest uptime. The operations and data center management team does not have to bother about any future downtime. It not only gives high uptime, but also instils confidence in customers.
The TCCF certification will undoubtedly help us position ourselves among the leaders in the data center industry, especially with respect to quality. This Tier IV certification is unique as no other data center with a capacity of 30.4MW of server load and unique power and cooling distribution design with optimised redundancy has been certified in the world thus far.
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