Data Centre Standards v standards - Update

Back in 2015 and 2016 I published a guide to Data Centre Standards, standards and guidelines, now we're in 2020 its time for an update!

It is very interesting how many data centre people get confused over Standards and standards. To clarify, a Standard is exactly that, a Standard, a Standard is either a nationally recognised document issued by the national standards body, in the UK this is the British Standards Institute (BSI) and it will be prefixed by British Standard (BS) or a regionally recognised document issued by a regional authority, in the EU, this will either be CEN, CENELEC, or ETSI and prefixed by European Normale (EN) or an International Standard issued by the International Standards Organisation and prefixed ISO. Standards may be upgraded from BS or EN to ISO, a good example would be the BS5750 Quality Management Standard which is now ISO9001.

There are also International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Standards that touch upon the data centre space.

You can be "certified" to a Standard, this means that your processes and procedures that relate to a particular site (and this is referenced in your certificate) can be externally assessed by an approved company to "certify" that they meet the required Standard. Or you can undertake "compliance or conformance" to a Standard. What is the difference, well if you undertake certification to a Standard, the company assessing you must be (in the UK at least) registered with the United Kingdom Accreditation Service or an associate of one that is, by associate we mean a company who fully complies with the requirements of the body accredited by UKAS.

Accredited bodies can be found on this link https://www.ukas.com/about-accreditation/accredited-bodies/.

Conformance to a Standard is usually undertaken by a body who is not accredited, although they might give the impression that they are, so be aware and ask for confirmation of their accreditation with UKAS.

Does it matter who you are accredited with, UKAS or whoever? well, yes it does, some procurement processes require that you are certified by an UKAS accredited body, we were recently advised that a building company lost out on ￡120 million pounds worth of work because although they thought they were "certified", it transpired that the company who did the "certification" were not UKAS accredited. This resulted in ￡40,000 worth of re-certification of their systems, processes and procedures and probably a severe censure of the "quality" manager.

So, be aware that its probably best to be "certified" by a UKAS accredited organisation.

Standards you might want to think about if you're in the Data Centre Wholesale arena (i.e you sell space/power/cooling to enterprises) are as follows:

ISO9001 Quality Management Systems, ISO14001 Environmental Management Systems, ISO22301 Business Continuity Management Systems, ISO27001 Information Security Management Systems, and finally ISO50001 Energy Management Systems.

There are also a series of Data Centre design, build and operate Standards, the EN 50600 series, and you can view (and buy) them on our website www.carbon3it.com/

There are also 3 additional documents, these are EN 50600-99-1 Recommended practices for energy efficiency, EN50600 -99-2 "Recommended practices for environmental sustainability" and EN50600 99-3 "Guidance to the application of EN50600 series"

It should be noted that the EN 50600 -99-1 document is a reformat of the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency) which is mentioned in more detail below, this is an example of how a published guideline, can develop into a recognised regional Standard.

The EN50600 series was published in 2018 as a series of ISO Technical Specifications, the ISO22237 series and detailed below and will be subject to a 5 year revision cycle as with all ISO Standards.

ISO/IEC 22237-1 - EN50600-1 Information technology- Data centre facilities and infrastructures Part 1:General concepts

ISO/IEC 22237-2 - EN50600 2-1 Information technology- Data centre facilities and infrastructures Part 2: Building construction

ISO22237-3 - EN50600 2-2 Information technology - Data centre facilities and infrastructures Part 3: Power distribution

ISO22237-4 - EN50600 2-3 Information technology - Data centre facilities and infrastructure Part 4: Environmental control

ISO22237-5 - EN50600 2-4 Information technology - Data centre facilities and infrastructure Part 5: Telecommunications cabling infrastructure

ISO22237-6 - EN50600 2-5 Information technology - Data centre facilities and infrastructure Part 6: Security systems

ISO22237-7 - EN50600 3-1 Information technology - Data centre facilities and infrastucture Part 7: Management and operational information

Note: It is not currently possible to be "certified" by a UKAS approved body to the EN 50600 Series or the ISO 22237 series, although there are organisations that provide "certification" such as the Data Centre Alliance Certification programme which uses the EN 50600 series as well as ISO27001 and participation in the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency) as their criteria, other organisations also provide "conformity" to this series.

In the US the equivalent of the BSI is the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), now these guys operate in a different fashion to to the UK and Europe and they have affiliate organisations that can develop Standards such as the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), the Telecommunication Industry Association (TIA), and the Building Industry Consulting Service International (BICSI) and their work in the data centre arena manifest themselves as these "American Standards"

ASHRAE 90.4 (2019) ANSI Approved

ANSI/TIA 942 B (2017) - This ANSI Standard is the equivalent of EN 50600 2-4 Telecommunications cabling infrastructure, and has an appendix that covers some of the other EN 50600 Standards

ANSI/BICSI 002 (Design) & 009 (Operations)

It should be noted that US data centre operators were the driving force for the European EN 50600 series to be elevated to ISO status, because of the confusion that arises with having 3 different organisations all developing data center Standards.

So, those are the Standards, what are the standards?

Similarly, many data centre people think that you can be certified to a Tier level, well, no you cant, the Uptime Institute is not a certifying body, the Tier Topology is not a Standard, although it can be considered to be a standard. The Uptime Institute is a private company and can place a note that the site conforms with their requirements, but it is not a certification to a Standard.

EPI has just issued what it states is a Standard, but is in fact another standard, they even go as far to say that they are following official processes, that maybe, but until EPI become a member of their national standards bodies and officially particpate it is sadly just another private company seeking to earn money from the ignorance of the data centre buying public.

The EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency) (EUCOC) is a best practice guideline, but is now part of a Standard as it now forms part of EN50600, as a technical report, and it is also a standard and one that you can participate in by applying directly to the EU - JRC who administer the scheme, further information can be found here https://iet.jrc.ec.europa.eu/energyefficiency/ict-codes-conduct/data-centres-energy-efficiency

However, in the UK, it is a requirement for all Government Data Centres and this includes their own sites, colocation sites, hosting sites and GCloud sites to be participants to the EUCOC, if you want to sell services to the public sector you must be a participant to the EUCOC.

Finally, there are a few "certifications" to various bits or even all of data centre operations, these include the "Certified Data Centre Energy Efficiency Award" or CEEDA, this is based upon a subset of the best practices of the EUCOC. How is this possible? Well, CEEDA is administered by Datacenter Dynamics on behalf of the British Computer Society (BCS), the BCS has its own royal charter that allows it to "certify" training courses, award schemes etc and that is how CEEDA is a certification. More information on CEEDA can be found https://www.ceedacert.com/

In essence, customers are demanding that data centres are increasingly certified to a set of Standards rather than standards, we've highlighted those we think are essential but at the end of the day it is your business and you should get what you think you need.

It should also be noted that there are specific data centre Standards that other regional entities have created (Mexico, China, and Singapore) and that some of these may be legal requirements in their countries of origin, it pays to retain local experts to advise on these.

Carbon3IT Ltd is the only independent energy efficiency consulting organisation in the UK that specialises in Data Centres.

We are ISO50001 Lead Auditors, we are EMA registered ESOS lead assessors, we provide review services for the EUCOC to the European Union - Joint Research Centre, as well as sitting on the EUCOC best practices committee.

We are the Global Lead Assessors/Auditors to the BCS CEEDA award and the Global Auditor for the Data Centre Alliance Certification Scheme

Our MD sits on the BSI's TCT7/3 which recently absorbed the IST 46 Sustainability, for and by ICT, mirror group to ISO JTC/1 SC39 committee that is developing data centre metrics Standards such as PUE and ERE. This committee developed the EN50600 series, of which, the first 4 in the series are presently under review.