The Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) has released an addendum to its data center standard and started the process aimed at making other necessary changes. The standard is ANSI/TIA-942-B Telecommunications Infrastructure Standard for Data Centers and the addendum is ANSI/TIA-942-B-1 Telecommunications Infrastructure Standard for Edge Data Centers.

TIA Data Center Standard

The standard defines design requirements for data center architecture, cabling, ventilation, cooling, power systems, security, monitoring/control, resiliency, safety and management systems.

The TR-42 standards committee has opened the full standard for updates and revisions. The process, which is conducted every five years, ensures resiliency and security of the critical facilities over time, according to TIA. The previous update and revision process was conducted in 2017.

The addendum addresses edge or micro data centers. The goal of such entities is to bring functionality as close as possible to end-users to reduce latency and make near real-time applications, such as autonomous vehicles, augmented reality and telehealth possible.

Micro data centers often are housed in pre-manufactured enclosures that are monitored and controlled remotely. Clearly, their characteristics are significantly different from those of traditional centralized data centers and ways must be found to ensure that they are as reliable as the traditional data centers are.

“Data centers are a critical component of the world’s digital infrastructure that connects our everyday lives,” Tom McGarry, TIA’s vice president of standards, said in a press release. “The TIA-942 standard helps ensure that as data centers evolve, they also become more resilient and thereby, more reliable for optimized performance and service delivery. With the new addendum, data center owners can apply the same globally trusted industry standard to new edge data centers that will be instrumental to meeting low-latency requirements of 5G and 6G applications and services.”

The TIA says that the “revisioning period” gives stakeholders – including data center users, owners, designers, builders, installers and auditors a way to contribute to the next version of the standard.