ViaWest got the design documents for its newest data center in Las Vegas certified as one of the most reliable data center designs in the world by the Uptime Institute and, according to its senior VP of data center operations, did not have to pay nearly as much as others pay for this level of reliability.

Dave Leonard, the senior VP, did not say how much exactly ViaWest will have to pay to build to the design that earned Tier IV, but said the cost would be lower than the US$22,000 per 1kW of IT power Uptime estimated it cost to build to the top tier level.

According to Uptime estimates – based on a survey of certified data center operators – it costs about $20,000 per kW to build a Tier III data center. ViaWest’s cost was higher than this estimate, according to Leonard.

Tier III is the most common tier among data centers that have been certified by the institute, but for ViaWest – whose Las Vegas project is the first commercial colocation data center to get Tier IV – the reliability was worth the extra cost.

Tier III protects the raised floor from outages during planned maintenance events, while “Tier IV is protection from unplanned events as well as planned events,” Leonard said. “Everything is redundant.”

How it works

ViaWest’s own “adaptable-mesh” electrical-infrastructure design allowed it to get fully redundant infrastructure at a much lower cost.

The firm was planning to apply for a patent, so Leonard declined to discuss the design in detail. He explained, however, that it essentially enables the infrastructure to provide a higher power output than the 50% of total capacity typical “mirror” redundant designs provide.

A traditional redundant set-up consisting of four 1,000kW uninterrupted power supply (UPS) units, for example, will provide a maximum of 2,000kW at the output (half of the four unit’s total capacity). In this set-up, each unit is loaded to half of its capacity to be able to take on the load of the unit it is backing up.

In ViaWest’s adaptable-mesh design, each UPS unit can be loaded to 75% of capacity, Leonard said. If one of the four units fails, the three remaining ones will split its load among themselves (25% of full capacity each).

With this approach, the operator can get 2,250kW of fully redundant power out of a 4,000kW UPS deployment. The capacity figures are hypothetical, used only to explain the concept.

A rare Tier

Only three constructed data centers in the US have Tier IV certification. The Uptime Institute has certified design documents for three more, including ViaWest’s Las Vegas building, according to the organization’s website.

Two of the three constructed Tier IV data centers are in Ohio and belong to Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company. The firm also has design documents certified for one more Tier IV facility.

US Bancorp operates the third constructed Tier IV data center in Olathe, Kansas and has an Uptime Institute certification of design documents for another one in the same city.

The most popular tier in the US is Tier III. A number of enterprises and service providers have gone through the process of getting this level of certification, including Target Corp., UnitedHealth Group, Verizon Wireless, IO, Telx and Digital Realty Trust, among others.

ViaWest expects to launch the first phase of what will be its third Las Vegas data center toward the end of 2012. The firm has already secured first tenants for the facility.

It will provide a total of 9MW of critical power at full build-out.