The Multi-tiered Hybrid Data Center
An innovative design model for cost reduction and
facilities optimization
Business white paper
Table of contents
Executive summary ..................................................3
The data center dilemma ..........................................3
Traditional data center designs...................................4
Single-tiered design................................................4
Multi-tiered (pod) design.........................................4
HP multi-tiered hybrid design......................................5
Innovative topology . .............................................5
Business focused design methodology . ....................6
Prospective business outcomes....................................7
Conclusion..............................................................8
Executive summary
The data center dilemma
To accommodate increasingly dense technology
environments, increasingly critical business
applications, and increasingly stringent service level
demands, data centers are typically engineered
to deliver the highest-affordable availability levels
facility-wide. Within this monolithic design approach,
the same levels of mechanical, electrical, and IT
infrastructure are installed to support systems and
applications regardless of their criticality or business
risk if unplanned downtime occurs. Typically, highredundancy designs are deployed in order to provide
for all eventualities. The result, in many instances, is
to unnecessarily drive up both upfront construction or
retro-fitting costs and ongoing operating expenses.
The complexities involved in planning, designing,
and deploying today’s critical production data
center environments have increased exponentially in
recent years. This is largely attributable to a growing
demand for highly available operational frameworks
capable of supporting high-density technology
systems, “always-on” applications, and aggressive
business-service delivery models.
The HP multi-tiered hybrid design approach, by
contrast, “right-sizes” the data center redundancy
infrastructure by engineering the facility to incorporate
multiple operational environments, each aligned
with business priorities and the criticality of specific
technology systems and applications. Technology
environments that, according to rigorous businessimpact analysis, require similar levels of redundancy—
high, mid-level, or low—are grouped within
segmented raised floor spaces (“pods”) supported by
“right-sized” facilities and technology infrastructure.
HP multi-tiered hybrid design can reduce capital
costs typically by 15 to 25 percent*. Because this
architecture conserves energy, requires fewer support
resources, and operates more efficiently, it can
substantially cut total cost of ownership (TCO) as well.
HP proprietary data based on customer modeling
*
The best-known data center classification system,
developed by the Uptime Institute, defines data center
availability as falling within four tiers (Figure 1).
The majority of data centers are mixed technology
environments populated with systems and applications
of varying criticality and business priorities. A bank’s
ATM technology must be available 24x7, and
therefore requires Tier 4 types of availability. But
applications sharing the same facility—for example,
check processing or funds transfer—may not be
severely affected by some downtime instances and
could therefore be accommodated by lower-tier
redundancy operational levels.
However, as application availability and proactive
downtime prevention become perceived as
increasingly central to business success, the trend
has been to build data centers to the highest tier
the enterprise’s budget allows. Entire facilities are
often designed to accommodate the availability
requirements of just a few business processes. The
high redundancy levels these processes require
are extended across the data center, regardless of
other systems’ and applications’ often substantially
lesser availability requirements, downtime risks, and
business significance.
Figure 1. Uptime Institute Tier Classification System
Tier 1
No Generator,
or optional
Basic UPS for
LAN Room,
non-redundant
Single Utility or on
Radial line from Loop
Tier 2
Generator
N+1 UPS with
redundant
components
Single Utility Feeders,
N+1 Mechanical
System
Tier 3
Concurrently
Maintainable
N+1
Generator
System
N+1 UPS with
redundant
components
One Active, One
Passive, Utility Source,
N+1 Mechanical
System
99.982%
Availability
Tier 4
Fault Tolerant
2N Generator
System
2N UPS
Systems
Dual Active Utility
Feeders, 2N
Mechanical System,
compartmentalization
99.995%
Availability
Tier
Tier
Tier
Tier
99.671%
Availability
99.741%
Availability
1—Non-redundant capacity components (single uplink and servers).
2—Tier 1 + redundant capacity components.
3—Tier 2 + dual-powered equipment and multiple uplinks.
4—Tier 3 + all components are fully fault-tolerant. Everything is dual-powered.
3
Figure 2. Typical pod design model—Availability/redundancy levels remain identical across all pods
Monolithic tier
A-side
B-side
MEP Systems/Infrastructure (tier IV) A-side
Pod-1
MEP Systems/Infrastructure (tier IV)
Pod-1
Not surprisingly, increased redundancy of
mechanical/electrical/plumbing (MEP) infrastructures,
computer networks and subsystems, uninterruptible
power supplies (UPS), telecommunications equipment,
and the like equates to increased overall costs.
To further complicate matters, this substantially
increased cost and complexity come at a time
when executive management and IT organizations
are struggling to gain control over data center
operational frameworks and are operating within tight
budgetary constraints.
Traditional data center designs
Single-tiered design
Conventional data centers are designed monolithically,
with technology systems and applications located
together and designed to operate within a single
tier level. To cover all availability contingencies and
provide for future growth, these monolithic facilities
are typically built to the highest-affordable facilities
tier level and incorporate fully redundant MEP and
technology infrastructures that feed all IT systems and
applications regardless of their availability risks or
business importance.
In this monolithic model, the physical raised floor
space is generally designed as a single footprint
comprising systems/applications within a mixed
technology environment. This framework requires
an “anywhere anytime” mindset, inasmuch as the
systems/applications are deployed into any available
rack/cabinet within the data center space.
The single-tiered approach readily accommodates
a multitude of diverse technology solutions and
provides a consistent IT architecture throughout the
entire space. But it harbors inherent efficiencies and
financial problems.
4
Single-tiered designs deploy only one operational
model that must accommodate the mixed-tier
applications environments that may exist across the
facility. There is no way to easily segment missioncritical applications from less-critical applications so
as to meet varying availability and business-impact
requirements. These disparate applications reside
within the same raised-floor space, although their MEP
operational requirements are apt to differ widely.
We have seen that increased redundancy inevitably
drives higher upfront construction costs. By providing
low- and medium-priority applications with redundancy
and reliability levels that far exceed their actual
requirements, the monolithic model is bound to result
in wasteful over-provisioning and over-investment of
precious capital. (It is estimated that as many as 50
percent of the applications running in the typical data
center could be classified as less than business-critical.)
Moreover, while highly robust for accommodating
technology systems throughout the data center space,
the monolithic approach tends to be expensive from
an operations perspective. In addition, it requires
the entire facilities infrastructure to be continuously
operating at “full throttle,” with unnecessary
redundancy continuously driving down energy
efficiency and driving up energy costs.
Multi-tiered (pod) design
Many data center operators have recognized that
higher levels of operational efficiencies could be
realized through a “multi-tiered” design model
that supports high-density technology deployments
while simultaneously accommodating lowertiered systems/applications within the same data
center facility footprint. This involves carving the
data center into segmented “pods” that represent
independent raised-floor spaces capable of
supporting individual environments that are fed
from dedicated, appropriately equipped facilities
infrastructures (Figure 2).
Figure 3. HP multi-tiered hybrid design model
MEP/Infrastructure tier IV A-side
MEP/Infrastructure tier II A-side
Tier II A-side
Tier IV A-side
Multi-tiered
Pod-1
Tier IV B-side
Saved space
Pod-2
No B-side (space saving)
Pod-1
MEP/Infrastructure tier IV B-side
Pod-2
Pods are nothing new. Co-location operational models
deployed by service providers and enterprises have
been utilizing the pod design concept for years.
Recently, enterprises have also begun to use this
approach to provide segmented raised-floor pods
that can accommodate high-density IT systems and
at the same time segregate them from, and negate
their impact upon, blade servers, rack-mount, and/or
legacy systems and applications.
This approach is highly inefficient for deploying highdensity systems with the appropriate segmentation,
because each pod is fed from the same high-level
MEP infrastructure that is engineered for the overall
facility, regardless of application criticality. Moreover,
it shares many of the operational cost and efficiency
drawbacks of single-tier designs.
HP multi-tiered hybrid design
Innovative topology
HP has introduced a future-focused innovation for
data center optimization from business, technology,
and financial perspectives. HP multi-tiered hybrid
design takes the pod concept to the next level by
engineering single data centers to deliver multiple
operational environments.
Using this model, data centers may be designed with
tiers of varying capabilities to meet specific technology
and business requirements. For example, the model
can be applied to design a data center as both a
Tier 2 and Tier 4 facility and enable the appropriate
level of facilities infrastructure to be assigned to
each designated pod (Figure 3). Each pod would be
engineered to match the availability requirements
of the specific technology systems/applications tiers
deployed within it, as determined by a structured
business priority analysis process. Business-critical
applications, for example, would be deployed only
within pods designated for high-uptime Tier 4 facilities’
operational models.
The multi-tiered hybrid approach carries added
advantages for companies that utilize chargeback
models for internal cost tracking. With the
establishment of multiple data center tiers, business
units can better apportion right-sized availability and
redundancy to target systems/applications, and better
determine how much they need to budget for their
data center requirements.
Various tiered applications are deployed within
designated pods that provide the required
operational levels.
To deliver the appropriate levels of fault-tolerance,
high-tier pod environments would be equipped with
fully redundant feeds to all IT equipment, redundant
computer and telecommunications networks, industrialstrength security hardening, and redundant power and
cooling and other mechanical/electrical infrastructure
components. Less-than-critical applications would
be deployed into pods engineered on lower-level
operational models.
Right-sizing each pod’s mechanical and electrical
infrastructure and redundancy technology in this
manner opens the door to substantial capital (CAPEX)
and operational (OPEX) cost savings.
Upfront data center construction costs can be reduced
by some 15 to 25 percent. And important efficiencies
can be realized in areas such as energy usage and
day-to-day facilities and IT support requirements.
5
Figure 4. Business impact analysis
Obtain list of
applications
Analyze facilities, infrastructure applications
Estimate cost
Categorize/Classify based on business impact
Define priority
Define business
impact and
urgency
Rationalize tiers
Define priority
level
Estimate cost
(2nd pass)
Map categories and infrastructure to (right sized)
DC tier
Model capacities
Estimate current and go forward costs
Determine data
center tiers
Process within overall
program management
Estimate project cost: facilities, infrastructure,
virtualization and migration costs
Calculate projected Return on investment (ROI),
obtain green light for detailed design
Modify capacity
Create Detailed design
Finalize ROI, obtain green light for implementation
Determine
capacity
of tiers
Final cost estimate
Business focused design methodology
Integral to HP multi-tiered hybrid design is a unique
process methodology that involves close collaboration
between the HP consultant/design teams and leaders
of clients’ IT and facilities organizations.
In fact, a key goal of the HP methodology is to
break down the “walls” that have traditionally
kept enterprises’ IT and facilities personnel apart,
as well as those separating network, mainframe,
desktop, storage, applications, and other intra-IT
disciplines. HP has found that a large measure of
the overprovisioning and overinvestment that have
characterized data center construction can be
traced to a lack of communication between these
traditionally independent entities. Their collaboration
and integration are vital for achieving an appropriate
balance between data center availability requirements
and capital and operations costs—a primary objective
of the HP design approach.
The multi-tiered hybrid design process begins with
production of traditional schematic design, design
development, and construction documents for both the
technology and mechanical/electrical infrastructures.
However, the HP methodology then departs from
traditional approaches based on a recognition
that significant efficiencies and cost savings can be
achieved if the nature of the applications intended to
be run in the data center is considered in a systematic
way during the critical planning, design, and
configuration phases (Figure 4).
6
Implement
Check Value Realization
Central to the process, therefore, is the determination
of critical business impact and urgency levels for each
prospective application. In a banking environment, for
example, an application providing authorization to
withdraw funds from an ATM machine may be classed
as having high impact and high urgency, whereas
an application providing for overnight transfer of
funds from one account to another may be classed as
having high impact but only medium urgency.
The combination of the application’s business impact
and urgency defines its priority level. This analytical
process is carried out within the context of overall
program management for data center optimization.
Once the priority of each software application
has been identified, the number and type of data
center tiers may be determined. Each application is
mapped to a tier that outlines the level of reliability
and redundancy corresponding to the application’s
business priority. Applications with critical priority
may be populated on computer equipment within a
Tier 4 environment. Applications with medium priority
may be assigned to Tier 2 or Tier 3 environments.
Applications with low priority may be slated for
Tier 1 environments.
The capacity of each tier may then be estimated
based on individual performance requirements
(required processing power, memory, network
bandwidth, and so on), estimated physical size of the
data center tier, and/or estimated power density of the
data center tier.
Figure 5. Multi-tiered hybrid design capital cost savings
Multi-tiered hybrid design
Monolithic: Data center with
high-level availability only
Multiple availability levels
within data center
Align
applications
with facilities
$46 million
$184
million
High
Additional steps can enhance the data center design
based on financial considerations, ultimately leading
to arrival at an estimated total capital cost based on
the number of data center tiers and their capacity.
At this point, the previously identified data center
tiers can be analyzed (rationalized) from a
financial perspective to determine whether any tier
consolidation may be achieved. For example, where
there are a large number of low- and critical-priority
applications and a small number of medium-priority
applications, it may be cost-effective to design a
data center with a Tier 1 section for the low-priority
applications and a Tier 4 section for the critical and
medium-priority applications, rather than creating
an additional Tier 3 section dedicated exclusively to
the relatively few medium-priority applications. This
strategy is based on the fact that a minimum fixed cost
is associated with the construction of each data center
tier. If appropriate, a new cost estimate is generated
as a result of this rationalization step.
This process may be repeated numerous times, each
iteration modifying various characteristics to optimize
them from a business and financial perspective.
High Medium Savings
(High + Medium = $138 million)
Prospective business outcomes
Enterprises deploying data centers built on the
HP multi-tiered hybrid design model can look to
realize immediate and long-term financial and
operational advantages:
•Capital cost savings: Upfront center construction
costs can be cut by 15 to 25 percent*. Compare,
for example, a 100,000 sq. ft. raised-floor data
center designed to a monolithic Tier 4 specification
(with power density of 100 watts/sq. ft.) with one
designed as a 50:50 split between Tier 2 and Tier
4 infrastructure based on analysis of application
criticality and priorities (Figure 5). According to
HP customer data, the original capital cost of
building the Tier 4 facility would have been
$184 million. But the data show that moving to
a multi-tiered hybrid design reduces this to $138
million, a savings of $46 million.
•High levels of energy efficiency: Each pod is rightsized to meet the appropriate operational model
requirements. Dynamic cooling capabilities can
provide targeted capacity to both high-density
technology and less-demanding pod environments.
HP proprietary data based on customer modeling
*
7
•Lower operations costs: Not only does an
HP multi-tiered hybrid design data center save on
energy outlays. Redundancy is built-in only where it
is needed, and the entire data center operates not
as a high-tier facility but within a hybrid mode that
can incorporate high, medium, and low operational
tier models. By avoiding overprovisioning and
unused redundancy of IT and MEP infrastructure,
this model requires less maintenance and support.
In addition, it enables multiple systems/applications
tiers—which might otherwise be housed in entirely
separate facilities—to share a physical enclosure,
security systems, access controls, and the like.
•Enhanced ability to meet specific applications
requirements: Each pod is engineered to match
the appropriate facilities operational model
(Tier 1 through Tier 4).
•Increased adaptability: For long-term viability and
cost-containment, modular “blocks” in the power
and cooling systems can be readily reconfigured to
modify various pods’ redundancy levels.
•Increased operational flexibility: The segmented
raised-floor pods are capable of supporting
technology applications of widely disparate
business criticality.
•Wider scalability: To provide for future growth,
the multi-tiered pods are designed with built-in
scalability based on projections from the business
impact analysis.
•Reduced business continuity risk: Systems and
equipment failures are contained within smaller,
more readily addressable, areas of the data center.
Conclusion
By helping today’s enterprises work within tightened
budgetary constraints and realize more cost-effective
and energy-efficient operation—while accommodating
their continuing need to house higher-and lower-tiered
technology systems and applications within the same
facility—HP multi-tiered hybrid design points the way
toward the data center of the future.
Working with experienced HP consultants and design
teams, clients can leverage this unique approach
to build right-sized data processing frameworks
that deliver consistently high levels of performance,
scalability, and predictability. They can substantially
enhance data center energy efficiency. They stand
to save millions of dollars in capital costs and
operational outlays. And they can position themselves
to meet their evolving business and operational
requirements for years to come.
Multi-tiered hybrid design is offered as part of the HP Critical Facilities Services delivered by EYP MCF. Additional information is
available at www.hp.com/go/cfs.
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© Copyright 2009, 2011 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only
warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein
should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.
Disclosure: Services which are considered professional engineering services are offered and will only be provided by professional, licensed
engineers. In the United States, these services are offered by EYP Mission Critical Facilities, Inc., which is a wholly owned subsidiary of HP.
4AA2-4791ENW, Created March 2009; Updated February 2011, Rev. 1