Mita data centre certified Tier III facility

After a week-long audit and several rigorous tests, the new government data centre in Santa Venera, MITA-01, has successfully attained Tier III facility certification by Uptime Institute, Communications Minister Austin Gatt said during a visit.

This accreditation meant that MITA-01 had become one of 33 data centres worldwide which were certified to reach this level of sophistication, the minister said.

He said MITA-01w as the first data centre in the region to have been certified as a Tier III Facility.

Mita chairman Godwin Grima said that MITA had changed from an IT provider to public administration to an agency with a wider remit to invest and promote ICT to reach the best possible levels in the Maltese society and economy.

He said that MITA-01, an investment of €7 million, was executed with the aim of strengthening and adding the necessary hosting space required for the government’s ICT projects for the next 15 years.

Dr Grima noted that had the government not invested in this facility it would not have been able to launch projects, such as the national eLearning platform which served over 45,000 educators and students, or the next generation eGovernment, which would enhance the quality of online services offered by Government.

"Today's announcement once again proves that public officers are able to deliver high quality results which are certified by international reputable entities to have reached outstanding levels,” he said.

The Data Centre Tier classification system is an industry standard approach for identifying different data centre site infrastructure topologies, based on four levels.  Tier 1 is the lowest and is commonly used for small scale server room whilst Tier IV is the most stringent and is designed to host mission critical computer systems.

Being certified as a Tier III facility means that each component within MITA-01 can be maintained, replaced or upgraded without disrupting any service.

Whilst the centre is still susceptible to fault, the site infrastructure in place will permit a speedy recovery.