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

September-2011
Tier IV Data Center
Fault Tolerant
Tier IV provides site infrastructure capacity and capability to permit any planned activity without
disruption to the critical load. Fault-tolerant functionality also provides the ability of the site
infrastructure to sustain at least one worst-case unplanned failure or event with no critical load
impact. This requires simultaneously active distribution paths, typically in a System+System
configuration. Electrically, this means two separate UPS systems in which each system has N+1
redundancy. Because of fire and electrical safety codes, there will still be downtime exposure due
to fire alarms or people initiating an Emergency Power Off (EPO). Tier IV requires all computer
hardware to have dual power inputs as defined by the Institute’s Fault-Tolerance. Tier IV site
infrastructures are the most compatible with high availability IT concepts that employ CPU
clustering, RAID DASD, and redundant communications to achieve reliability, availability, and
serviceability.
Current Vista facility data centers would fall into the first three tiers, with some being Tier-I and
very few at the Tier-III level. Ultimately, VA data center facilities should achieve an acceptable
level of confidence (tier) within the VA’s infrastructure in order to support enterprise-level
systems such as HealtheVet systems. In order to establish and implement a minimum level of
standards for VA data centers, a base set of standards must be established and used in a survey of
facility data centers.
2. Tier I, II, III, and IV data centers shall be provided with wet pipe automatic sprinkler
protection in accordance with NFPA 13. Sprinkler protection shall be installed utilizing
standard response fusible link sprinklers.
Note: Standard response fusible link sprinklers will lessen the chance of a sprinkler
being accidentally broken and will still provide structure protection since a standard
response head is more robust and harder to break that a typical glass bulb quick
response sprinkler.
3. Tier I, II, III, and IV data centers shall be protected with a gaseous fire suppression
system when required by NFPA 75. Note that a gaseous fire suppression system is in
addition to, and does not replace, the required wet pipe automatic sprinkler system.
Note: NFPA 75 provides risk criteria to establish the need for gaseous systems.
Generally, Tier I systems would not require a gaseous system.
3.8 Paint Spray Areas: Comply with NFPA 33.
3.9 Atrium Smoke Control Systems: Comply with NFPA 92B. See the VA Design Manual for
HVAC systems for additional design criteria.
3.10 VA Canteen Retail Stores: Retail stores located in health care occupancies shall be
considered as hazardous areas and shall therefore be separated from adjacent spaces by onehour
fire rated construction.
3.11 Pharmacies: Pharmacies located in health care occupancies shall be considered storage areas
and shall therefore be separated from adjacent spaces by one-hour fire rated construction.
Fire or service counter shutters shall be provided to protect openings where medication is
dispensed or other transactions occur.
3.12 Chutes: Linen chutes and waste chutes shall comply with the provisions in NFPA 82 for
limited access gravity chutes.
3.13 Parking Garages: Parking garages shall comply with the provisions in NFPA 88A except for
construction type, height and area limitations, and building separation, which shall comply
with 2.1. and 2.2 of this manual.
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