offering the top-tier Dedicated Server series for local visitors. 
When talking about Data Center Redundancy Tiers & uptime, it’s common to use the notation “9s”, which stands for 99% (99.9%, 99.99%, etc.). 99% offers excellent odds of success in various situations. Such as your chances of winning the lottery or your flight departing on schedule. But in terms of Data Center Redundancy Tiers, 99% uptime over the course of a year amounts to a sizeable amount of downtime, or 3.65 days or 14.4 minutes each day.
Your revenue, productivity, customer satisfaction, and reputation can all suffer from downtime. One research found that 88% of big businesses reported losing more than $300,000 every hour when a server failed.
This is a reasonable estimate because, disregarding legal fees, fines, and disadvantages, 40% of businesses surveyed by the Information Technology Industry Council (ITIC) stated that the price of one hour of downtime might range from $1 million to more than $5 million. If the interruption affects a significant commercial transaction or happens during prime business hours. This number might increase to millions every minute.
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The System for Classifying Data Center Tiers
A consistent and impartial international standard for data center performance is provided by the Data Center Redundancy Tiers Classification System. Each tier is exactly defined based on a variety of factors, including data center redundancy levels, uptime guarantee, staff expertise, maintenance protocols, and more.
This system, developed by the Uptime Institute in 2005, sets data center tier standards to create four distinct data center redundancy tiers: Tier I, Tier II, Tier III, and Tier IV. The Uptime Institute’s tier levels are meant to shed light on the minimal standards of availability and performance anticipated of data centers within a tier. These guidelines are frequently used by providers of data centers to assess and describe their own uptime and redundancy capabilities.
As you advance from Tier I Data Center, which provides the least reliability, to Tier IV Data Center, which offers the highest, a data center’s capabilities increase. As you climb the tier ladder, each tier has the requirements of the one before it. It can be easier to match your needs with a type of data center tier that is adequately prepared if you are aware of the capabilities at each level.
How much reliability do you require?
The increasing demand for availability is one of the factors that motivate businesses to use external data centers. Because of the uptime and performance provided by these facilities. You may grow your company without worrying that a system malfunction or natural disaster will undermine your progress. The Data Center Redundancy Tiers Classification System can offer advice on the data center tier level that can best balance your risk patience and budget as you consider your reliability requirements.
| Tier Data Center Levels | Uptime per year | Downtime per year | Redundancy | Cost | Traditional Customer |
| Tier I Basic Capacity |
99.671% | <28.8 hours | – None | $ | – Small businesses – Start-ups – Businesses with simple requirements |
| Tier II Redundant Capacity Components |
99.741% | <22 hours | – Partial power and cooling redundancy | $$ | – SMB |
| Tier III Concurrently Maintainable” |
99.982% | <1.6 hours | – N+1 fault tolerance | $$$ | – Growing businesses – Large businesses |
| Tier IV Fault Tolerant” |
99.995% | <26.3 minutes | – 2N or 2N+1 – fully fault-tolerant |
$$$$ | – Government entities – Large enterprises – Businesses with an international reach |
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