Fire Protection Design Manual - Office of Construction and Facilities ...

September-2011
3.7 Information Technology Telecommunication, and High Cost Equipment Rooms:
A. Mission-essential information technology, telecommunication, and high cost equipment
rooms and infrastructure, with the potential for high dollar loss and/or business interruption,
shall be provided with wet pipe automatic sprinkler protection and shall be designed to
comply with NFPA 75 as described in this design manual.
B. Additional guidance is provided in PG-18-3, VA Design and Construction Procedures, Topic
10.
C. Head End Equipment Rooms as defined in the VA Electrical Design Manual shall be
provided with sprinkler protection and smoke detection.
D. Telephone Equipment Rooms (TER) and Main Computer Rooms (MCR) as specified in the
VA Electrical Design Manual are to be designed in accordance with Section 3.7 E, Data
Centers. A Telephone Equipment Room is to be considered a Tier I facility.
E. Data Centers:
1. Tier I, Tier II, Tier III and Tier IV data centers are defined in “Data Center Standards,”
April 2004, VHA Enterprise Management Center, Office of Information. The following
is extracted from that document:
Tier I Data Center
Basic
A Tier I data center is susceptible to disruptions from both planned and unplanned activity. It has
computer power distribution and cooling, but it may or may not have a raised floor, a UPS, or an
engine generator. If it does have UPS or generators, they are single-module systems and have
many single points of failure. The infrastructure should be completely shut down on an annual
basis to perform preventive maintenance and repair work. Urgent situations may require more
frequent shutdowns. Operation errors or spontaneous failures of site infrastructure components
will cause a data center disruption.
Tier II Data Center
Redundant Components
Tier II facilities with redundant components are slightly less susceptible to disruptions from both
planned and unplanned activity than a basic data center. They have a raised floor, UPS, and
engine generators, but their capacity design is “Need plus One” (N+1), which has a singlethreaded
distribution path throughout. Maintenance of the critical power path and other parts of
the site infrastructure will require a processing shutdown.
Tier III Data Center
Concurrently Maintainable
Tier III level capability allows for any planned site infrastructure activity without disrupting the
computer hardware operation in any way. Planned activities include preventive and
programmable maintenance, repair and replacement of components, addition or removal of
capacity components, testing of components and systems, and more. For large sites using chilled
water, this means two independent sets of pipes.
Sufficient capacity and distribution must be available to simultaneously carry the load on one
path while performing maintenance or testing on the other path. Unplanned activities such as
errors in operation or spontaneous failures of facility infrastructure components will still cause a
data center disruption. Tier III sites are often designed to be upgraded to Tier IV when the
client’s business case justifies the cost of additional protection.
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