INDUSTRY INTELLIGENCE POWERED BY THE DCA
Surprisingly enough, the
notion of a global data centre
certification programme is a
relatively recent concept.
systems and this applies to business and
consumer customers.
There are of course other International
Organisation for Standardisation (ISO)
management standards that data
centres can be certified to, such as
the ISO9001 Quality Management,
ISO14001 Environmental Management,
ISO22301 Business Continuity, ISO27001
Information Security and finally ISO50001
Energy Management.
Surprisingly enough, the notion of
a global data centre certification
programme is a relatively recent concept. These require a rigorous assessment
of the who, what, where and how you
conduct business in these areas, they
take approximately six to 12 months to
implement, depending on the size of
the organisation and require day to day
management. The costs to implement
each standard is variable and depends
on the size of the organisation and the
complexity of the management system.
Prior to this date, the only real
certification that a data centre could seek
to be compliant with was a US private
companies grading system. The EN50600 series is under continual
development but the core standards have
been published and some are in their 2nd
edition, the full suite is as follows:
It wasn’t until 2010 that a truly
comprehensive multi-disciplined
data centre standard was started
by the European Committee for
Standardisation, the European
Committee for Electrotechnical
Standardisation and the European
Telecommunications Standards Institute
also known as CEN/CENELEC/ETSI with
the EN50600 standard. EN50600-1 – General concepts
There had been other certifications
such as the US Telecommunications
Industry Association with its TIA942-A,
although this was primarily focused
on the network cabling topologies,
with only brief details on the electro-
mechanical elements. EN50600-2-5 Security systems
So, what accreditation should
a data centre (enterprise or
colocation facility) be certified to?
There was also the EU Code of Conduct
for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency) aka
EUCOC and its focus was clear, based on
the forecast that data centres in Europe
would use some 104TWh of electricity in
2020, from a baseline of 56TWh in 2007.
Using the EUCOC and KPI Metrics
developed by the Green Grid, the Certified
Energy Efficient Data Centre Award
(CEEDA) has assessed over 60 data
centres globally since 2011. A list can be
accessed online at ceedacert.com
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EN50600-2-1 Building construction
EN50600-2-2 Power distribution and supply
EN50600-2-3 Environmental control
EN50600-2-4 Telecommunications
cabling infrastructure
EN50600-3-1 Management and
operational information
There are also the EN50600-4-X
series which relate to data centres’ key
performance indicators (KPI’s) covering
PUE, REF and others.
There is also three technical reports
(TR’s) covering energy efficiency,
TR99-1 and Sustainability (TR99-2) and
guidance (TR99-3).
These standards have ‘conformance’
sections and it is possible to be
assessed using these criteria but the
official stance of CEN/CENELEC/ETSI
is that there is no official certification
programme authorised by them, but
that they recognise that there are
external certification bodies that can
provide a certificate that states that the
conformance criteria have been met. Their
recommendation is that if you seek to be
certified then your certifying body should
be themselves assessed to ISO17021 and
ISO17065 and be a member of an official
national accreditation service. In the UK
this body is United Kingdom Accreditation
Service (UKAS).
Due to the confusing landscape of data
centre certifications globally, the Data
Centre Alliance has, since 2015, provided
an independent certification based upon
the EN50600 series, the EUCOC and some
additional requirements. This is explained
in more detail below:
The objectives of the DCA
certification programme
The purpose of the DCA certification
scheme exists to provide an industry
led, widely adopted recognition of a data
centre’s designed purpose, its operational
integrity, energy efficiency practices and
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