Duffield, VA - OnePartner, LLC, is pleased to announce its Advanced Technology & Application Center (ATAC), Duffield, Va., has achieved Certification as the nation's first and only commercial Tier III facility. As such, the ATAC promises to be region's premier commercial data center for colocation, hosting and disaster recovery services.
"This is a tremendous feat," says Tom Deaderick, director of OnePartner. "There is an enormous amount of work and planning that goes into designing a building system in which any one component can be removed for replacement or repair without interrupting service. From the beginning, Concurrent Maintainability with a Tier III Certification was our goal."
Julian Kudritzki, Certification manager of the Uptime Institute and ComputerSite Engineering, affirms the accomplishment.
"The OnePartner Advanced Technology & Application Center (ATAC) in Duffield, Virginia, is currently the sole US company providing outsourced commercial data center services (including colocation and disaster recovery) that has been awarded a Tier III Design Certification by the Uptime Institute," says Kudritzki.
The Uptime Institute (uptimeinstitute.com) created the Tier classification system as a benchmark for reliable data center infrastructure design.
The Uptime Institute exclusively licenses ComputerSite Engineering to perform the reviews of data center capabilities and recommend Tier levels. Upon review of the detailed building and electrical plans for the OnePartner ATAC, ComputerSite Engineering awarded the facility a Tier III Design Certification. Implementation as designed assures the achievement of Certification in the post-construction phase.
A Tier III data center, like ATAC, has multiple redundant systems, so a critical primary system fails over to secondary systems without impact on services. For instance, if the power utility fails, redundant Uninterruptible Power Systems (UPS), which are essentially gigantic batteries, would power the ATAC until redundant diesel generators start. Each of these generators are capable of supporting ATAC's electrical needs as long as necessary until the utility power is restored. Thus for a Tier III facility, like the ATAC, to experience a power, or cooling outage, multiple independent systems must fail.
Tier levels define the availability (also called "uptime") a facility's design and operation can achieve. A high availability is the primary metric in consideration of a data center for hosting, colocation or disaster recovery.
"Certification levels are important to those looking for the best possible infrastructure for a distributed environment (e.g. offices in multiple locations)," begins Deaderick
Deaderick credits the OnePartner ATAC "design team" for their foresight and diligence.
- Thomas Weems Architect, Thomas Weems
- Vreeland Engineering, Chris Lay
- Seda Engineering, Steve Farris
- J.A. Street & Associates, Jim Street
"Our own Chip Childress, Todd Miller and Mac Scofield provided leadership that didn't falter when faced with unparalleled challenges," adds Deaderick. "This achievement would have been impossible without each of our partners.
Bank of Tennessee's Phillip B. Haumiller, senior operating office & executive vice president, says the OnePartner ATAC's impressive site design and commitment to achieving Tier III were vital in his firm's decision to establish the ATAC as its primary data center for business continuance/disaster recovery.
"After researching the possibility of building our own disaster recovery site we found it much more cost effective to utilize OnePartner ATAC as our Disaster Recovery Center," explains Haumiller.
According to Deaderick, organizations like the Bank of Tennessee, understand the value of preparedness, whether forecasting the possibility of disaster or the more probable instance of system outages.
"The Bank of Tennessee's primary concern was that of verifying that we were committed to a design that would be the best possible solution for their customers," says Deaderick.
According to Deaderick, after 9/11, companies within the World Trade Center towers that had an appropriate disaster recovery system were able to "do business almost immediately."
"We were all proud of those companies and their ingenuity. I'm sure when they were planning the infrastructure they never imagined the complete destruction we saw," says Deaderick. "There were probably people within those organizations who questioned the expense of their business continuance investment. Yet, on September 12th, only the organizations that had made the investment had a future."
Deaderick says that in much the same way that no one could predict the extent of the 9/11 catastrophe, many underestimate the more common, smaller disruptions of service (power outages, telecommunications failures, etc.) that happen much more frequently.
"At some point as your organization continues to automate, you will reach a point where you cannot risk going any further without a failsafe. When you reach that point, a disaster recovery plan is essential," says Deaderick.
For more information concerning the limited space availability within the OnePartner ATAC, please call Tom Deaderick at (888) SOS-1PARTNER (767-1727).
The 9,200 sq. ft. OnePartner ATAC will provide the high availability and security necessary to become the region's vital central information resource. The Bank of Tennessee, OnePartner HIE (the Southwest Virginia/Northeast Tennessee Regional Health Information Organization), and Holston Medical Group (the Kingsport-based, multi-specialty practice of more than 140 providers) have chosen the OnePartner ATAC for their data hosting and disaster recovery needs.