TIA-942

The Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) ANSI/TIA-942-A Telecommunications Infrastructure Standard for Data Centers^[1] is an American National Standard (ANS) that specifies the minimum requirements for telecommunications infrastructure of data centers and computer rooms including single tenant enterprise data centers and multi-tenant Internet hosting data centers. The topology proposed in the standard was intended to be applicable to any size data center.^{[2][3] [4]} The standard was first published in 2005, following on the structured cabling work defined in TIA/EIA-568, and is often cited by companies such as ADC Telecommunications^[2] and Cisco Systems.^[5] The standard was updated with an addendum ANSI/TIA-942-A-1 in April 2013 from the TR-42.1 Commercial Building Telecommunications Cabling Subcommittee, the formulating group that oversees development of the standard.^[6] The Telecommunications Industry Association does not offer certification programs or certify compliance to TIA standards. In many cases, there are other organizations and consultants that can provide those services. However, TIA does not certify these organizations or consultants.

On Oct. 15, 2015, the TIA TR-42.1 Subcommittee voted to start the revision process of ANSI/TIA-942-A. The standard will undergo updates during 2016.

The ANSI/TIA-942-A specification references private and public domain data center requirements for applications and procedures such as:

• Network architecture
• Electrical design
• File storage, backup and archiving
• System redundancy
• Network access control and security
• Database management
• Web hosting
• Application hosting
• Content distribution
• Environmental control
• Protection against physical hazards (fire, flood, windstorm)
• Power management

References

1. "TIA-942". TIA-942 Global Registry. Retrieved 28 April 2015.
2. "TIA-942 Data Center Standards Overview" (PDF). ADC. January 31, 2006. Retrieved Dec 30, 2013.
3. "TIA-942". SearchDataCenter web site. TechTarget. March 2006. Retrieved July 10, 2013.
4. "TIA-942" (PDF). TIA-942. TIA. Apr 12, 2005. Retrieved Dec 30, 2013.
5. "Data Center Top-of-Rack Architecture Design" (PDF). White paper. Cisco Systems. April 18, 2011. Retrieved July 10, 2013.
6. "TIA Issues New Telecommunications Infrastructure Standard on Data Center Switch Fabrics in Order to Support Cloud Computing Growth". News release. April 9, 2013. Retrieved July 10, 2013.