Colt recently earned Uptime Institute’s Tier III Certification of Design Documents for two halls inside its London 3 facility. The Tier III Design Certification is an independent assessment of the capability of the design to continue to sustain computer room operations during any maintenance activity.

Earlier this year Colt became the first data center operator in Europe to be accredited with Uptime Institute’s Management & Operations (M&O) Stamp of Approval which it was awarded for its London 3 site.

“This is great news not only for us, but for our customers as well,” wrote Victor Smith, Director of Product Development, Colt Data Centre Services. “Certification is an independent assessment of our data centres’ resilience and as such ensures that our customers can be assured they are getting the highest quality design available.”

The Malta Government’s new data center in Santa Verena recently earned Uptime Institute Tier III Facility Certification.

The Malta Information Technology Agency’s (MITA) new data center will provide online public services and IT services for Malta’s government, as well help the launch projects such as the national eLearning Platform which serves over 45,000 educators and students.

The site has static UPS systems, DX CRAC units, and diesel powered engine generators. The engine generators are very quiet to minimize the disturbance to the residents across the street. The site was certified at 200 kW, but has the ability to expand to 800 kW.

Matthew Mescall, Uptime Institute Consultant on the project, said the Tier III performance demonstration went very smoothly.

“Today’s announcement once again proves that public officers are able to deliver high quality results which are certified by international reputable entities to have reached outstanding levels,” said Dr. Godwin Grima, Chairman of MITA.

Uptime Institute recently participated in SearchDataCenter.com’s Data Center Advisory Board Q&A on capacity planning. In the article, Steve Carter, Uptime Institute VP of Digital Infrastructure Services explains how companies can start looking at long-term planning.

Carter warns that traditional capacity planning forecasting practices will lead to over-building:

“Many new data centers are significantly over built. My belief is that using common capacity planning forecasting practices in use today will lead to at least 2X over specification of spatial requirements. Common capacity planning practices are not keeping pace with the realities of advances in hardware and the software that enables visualization/consolidation capabilities.

“I believe this gap is and will continue to lead to over-specification of total data center infrastructure requirements from the IT load perspective. Understanding how application load drives IT infrastructure requirements, and how IT infrastructure requirements drive data center facilities requirements needs to be better understood at more granular level. In the past, a lot of this was guesswork. We can no longer estimate future IT electrical loads by simply projecting past IT load parameters based on historical UPS electrical load profiles.”

Uptime Institute Professional Services recently hired new Director of Technical Services, Debbie Seidman. She will be managing Uptime Institute’s delivery of Design and Facility Tier Certifications worldwide.

Seidman’s previous jobs include deploying modular data center products for HP, developing data center utility rebate programs with Xcel Energy, and over twenty years experience as a facility project manager and operations engineer.

Modular data center experience: Seidman’s role at HP was liaison between HP and customers, making sure the customer had the appropriate infrastructure in place before the Pod arrived. She also oversaw start-up, commissioning and turn-over processes.

Seidman said modular data centers (prefab units delivered on site) allow companies to roll out a staged deployment, a piece at a time. It’s quicker than traditional construction, and there can be cost advantages.

On the other hand, Seidman said brick and mortar data centers allow for more design flexibility, and that some geographic locations may have long term permit issues with regard to prefab structures for aesthetic reasons.

“I don’t think we’ll see the entire data center market going modular, Seidman said. “It’s adaptable, compact, and can be less expensive in upfront costs. But you can’t just plug these things in, you need to ensure the infrastructure is in place.”

At Xcel Energy, Seidman was responsible for driving data center adoption of demand-side energy efficiency rebates. One of the objectives of the program was to drive cooperation between facilities and IT departments.

Energy efficient IT equipment, efficient server power supplies, server virtualization software, or energy efficient UPS systems all cost more money upfront. Seidman said there is a payback over time, but companies don’t always analyze the total cost of ownership. So utilities step in to encourage implementing more efficient equipment.

“Energy efficient rebate money is available, it’s up to the owners to pursue it,” Seidman said. “Data center operators are risk averse people, and trying something new takes additional time and work. A rebate can bring the costs down, but it takes more effort than a standard design. But people should know about their utility’s rebate programs. It’s available to them as a rate payer.”

Uptime Institute is proud to welcome Debbie Seidman to the team.

Uptime Institute recently awarded Russian colo provider DataSpace Tier III Facility Certification, the first such designation in Eastern Europe. DataSpace converted an aging Moscow Tire Factory into a Tier III Data Center, photos below.