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Ask for proof, not labels. A useful data-center due-diligence conversation covers the exact service-level agreement (SLA), how availability is measured, exclusions and remedies, the facility’s certified scope, independent audit reports, physical-access controls, incident notification, and tested recovery plans. Then compare those answers with your workload’s business impact and regulatory obligations.
Start with the service you are actually buying
Providers often discuss a campus, region, or platform in general terms, while your contract covers one site, cage, rack, managed service, or cloud product. Put the exact service and facility at the top of your question list.
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Questions to ask
- Which legal entity, facility address, service, and network or power configuration are covered by the commitment?
- Is the promise an availability SLA, a service-level objective, or an internal target?
- Does the commitment apply to the entire service, or only to power, cooling, connectivity, or another component?
- Which version of the SLA and operating policies will be attached to our contract?
Request the governing document, not a presentation summary. Record the measurement period, start date, eligible service components, customer responsibilities, and the person or team responsible for interpreting the terms.
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How availability is calculated
Ask the provider to show the availability formula in plain language and with an example from the proposed service. Clarify whether measurement is continuous or based on monthly intervals, which monitoring system is authoritative, and whether customers can inspect raw incident records or monthly reports.
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- What event starts and ends an outage for SLA purposes?
- Are partial outages, degraded performance, failed components, and scheduled failovers counted?
- Who declares an incident, and can the customer challenge a measurement?
- How quickly will availability reports be delivered after each measurement period?
Do not convert a marketing percentage into an annual downtime allowance until the contract defines the calculation. A figure that excludes maintenance, customer equipment, or network events is not comparable with one that counts those minutes.
Exclusions and dependencies
Have the provider enumerate every exclusion and place it beside the commitment in your notes. Typical categories include planned maintenance, emergency work, customer configuration, third-party networks, force majeure, denial-of-service attacks, and failures in equipment that the customer owns or controls. The important question is not whether an exclusion exists, but whether it could remove the very failure your business is trying to insure against.
Remedies when the commitment is missed
Ask what happens after a breach and what the customer must do to claim a remedy.
- What service credits, refunds, extensions, or other remedies are available?
- Must the customer submit a claim within a stated number of days?
- Are credits automatic or dependent on provider approval?
- Are credits the sole remedy, or can the contract provide additional rights for repeated or serious failures?
- Do caps, minimum invoice amounts, or termination thresholds limit the remedy?
Separate an SLA credit from compensation for consequential business loss. They are usually different contractual concepts, and only your negotiated agreement determines what is available.
Ask what the facility can withstand
Power, cooling, and distribution paths
Request a diagram and an explanation of redundancy for utility feeds, generators, uninterruptible power systems, switchgear, cooling plant, controls, and distribution to your equipment. Ask which components can be maintained while the service remains online and which are single points of failure.
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- How many independent power paths reach our equipment?
- Can a generator, UPS, chiller, pump, switch, or control system be taken out of service without an outage?
- What fuel, water, spare-parts, and vendor dependencies could limit runtime?
- How are capacity limits detected before redundancy is consumed?
- When was the last full-load or integrated systems test, and what corrective actions followed?
Ask for evidence appropriate to your confidentiality rules: one-line diagrams, maintenance procedures, test summaries, and a current risk register may be more useful than a badge on a website.
Understand Tier terminology
Uptime Institute defines Tier III as concurrently maintainable and Tier IV as fault tolerant. The classification describes infrastructure topology; it does not prescribe one technology, guarantee a contractual availability percentage, or assess every regional hazard, security control, or continuity dependency.
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Uptime Institute’s 2021-updated explanation says the current Tier Standard does not assign availability predictions to Tier levels. Treat the Tier label and the SLA as separate evidence: the former describes capability, while the latter states what the provider promises and how failure is measured.
Demand security assurance you can examine
Independent reports and their scope
Ask which independent audit or assurance reports are available under a nondisclosure agreement. For every report, capture the reporting period, examination type, systems and locations in scope, control objectives, exceptions, and the auditor’s opinion.
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If the provider cites SOC 2, ask which AICPA Trust Services Criteria are included: security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, or privacy. “SOC 2” alone does not tell you which criteria were tested or whether the report covers the facility and service your business will use.
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- Is it a point-in-time report or a period-of-time examination?
- Were any controls qualified, and what remediation evidence is available?
- How are customer responsibilities described in the report?
Use a report as evidence of the controls examined during its stated period, not as a permanent certification of every future configuration.
Physical access and equipment movement
Ask how employees, contractors, visitors, couriers, and emergency personnel are authorized and monitored. Require a clear chain of custody for equipment entering, leaving, or being serviced.
- What identity proofing and approval are required before access?
- Are visits escorted, recorded, and reviewed after the fact?
- How long are badge, biometric, video, and visitor logs retained?
- Who reviews access records, how often, and what triggers an investigation?
- How are lost credentials revoked, and how quickly are former staff removed?
- How are racks, media, spare parts, and failed drives protected during delivery, removal, destruction, or repair?
NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 treats physical access, environmental conditions, and equipment delivery or removal as audit-record subjects. Those categories are practical prompts for requesting sample logs, retention policies, and review procedures.
Facility security assessments
Ask whether the site has undergone a specialist physical-security assessment and what it covered. Uptime Institute describes a Facility Security Review as examining physical-security components in the context of facility topology and related operational plans. Verify whether the provider actually obtained such a review, which site it covered, when it occurred, and whether findings were closed.
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Incident detection, notification, and cooperation
Detection and escalation
Make the provider describe the path from an alert to a customer notification. Ask which systems monitor unauthorized entry, environmental changes, power events, malware, network anomalies, and equipment tampering; who triages alerts; and how incidents are prioritized.
- What events qualify as a security incident, service incident, privacy incident, or near miss?
- What severity levels and escalation times apply?
- Who is the 24-hour contact, and how is the contact list maintained?
- Can the customer participate in an investigation without compromising evidence?
Notification terms
Get trigger and timing language in the contract. Ask whether notice starts when the provider confirms an incident, suspects one, or determines that customer data may be affected. Clarify the communication channel, update frequency, minimum information, and final report.
Request that notices identify affected services, time windows, known indicators, containment steps, customer actions, and any regulatory or law-enforcement constraints. Also ask how the provider handles incidents involving a subcontractor or shared infrastructure.
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Map provider objectives to your business impact
Ask for recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs) for the exact service. An RTO describes the target time to restore service; an RPO describes the amount of data loss, measured in time, that the recovery design is intended to tolerate. Compare both with your own business-impact analysis rather than accepting a generic platform target.
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- Which functions are restored first, and who sets that priority?
- What roles and decision rights exist during a prolonged disruption?
- Which data, configurations, keys, and dependencies must be available to recover?
- What customer actions are required, and what remains the provider’s responsibility?
NIST contingency guidance calls for defined recovery objectives, restoration priorities, assigned roles, and plans for maintaining essential functions after disruption, compromise, or failure. Ask the provider to show those elements in its plan.
Geographic and supply-chain dependencies
Ask what happens if the site, utility source, cooling system, network route, building, or critical supplier is unavailable. “Multi-site” is not enough: determine whether alternate capacity is geographically separate, whether it shares a power grid or carrier, and how data, identity, keys, and management systems move during failover.
- What is the maximum time before alternate capacity is usable?
- Is replication synchronous or asynchronous, and what determines the achievable RPO?
- Which suppliers, fuel deliveries, telecommunications carriers, and access roads are essential?
- How are regional hazards such as flood, fire, earthquake, severe weather, or civil disruption assessed?
Exercises and evidence
Ask how often continuity, disaster-recovery, cyber-incident, and failover plans are exercised. Request the last exercise’s scope, scenario, participants, observed recovery time, unresolved findings, owners, and due dates. A tabletop discussion, component test, and live service failover prove different things; identify which was performed.
Cloud and colocation require different follow-ups
For colocation, focus on facility topology, your equipment, cross-connects, remote hands, and the boundary between provider and customer. For a managed service, add operating-system, backup, patching, and change-control responsibilities.
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For a hyperscale cloud service, ask separately about the provider’s service-level objectives and your application’s resilience. Google Cloud, for example, emphasizes target availability and application-level resilience such as failover, load balancing, and status reporting rather than relying only on a data-center tier. That is one provider’s model, not a universal rule. Your questions should cover the application architecture: multi-zone or regional deployment, health checks, dependency failure, backup restoration, and how status information reaches operators.
Use one evidence pack to compare providers
Send every candidate the same questionnaire and require the same evidence format. Score documented facts separately from verbal assurances.
| Decision area | Evidence to request | What to record |
|---|---|---|
| Contractual uptime | Current SLA, formula, measurement reports, exclusions, remedies | Covered service, period, outage definition, claim process, caps |
| Facility capability | Certification letter, stage, site scope, topology and test summaries | Tier designation, certification date, single points of failure |
| Independent assurance | SOC report or other audit, bridge letter, corrective-action records | Criteria, systems, locations, period, exceptions |
| Physical security | Access policy, sample logs, retention schedule, equipment chain of custody | Authorization, monitoring, review, revocation, movement controls |
| Incident response | Runbook summary, notification clause, contact and escalation matrix | Triggers, deadlines, updates, customer participation |
| Recovery | RTO/RPO statement, dependency map, exercise report, remediation tracker | Geographic separation, priorities, test results, open findings |
Weight the rows according to your workload. A transaction-processing system, public website, archive, and development environment do not have the same tolerance for downtime or data loss. Uptime Institute notes that tiers align to different business functions and requirements, so a higher tier is not automatically the best fit.
Contract and renewal checklist
- Attach the SLA, security schedule, data-processing terms, incident-notification language, and recovery commitments to the signed agreement.
- Name the exact facility, service components, certification stage, and audit-report period.
- Define customer and provider responsibilities for monitoring, backups, failover, access approvals, and evidence requests.
- Set a calendar reminder before each audit report expires, certification changes, renewal, or major architectural change.
- At renewal, compare actual incidents, measured availability, claimed credits, test findings, and unresolved exceptions with the original promises.
- Require advance notice and approval rights for material changes to site, subcontractors, network design, or security controls.
Warning signs that require follow-up
- A provider quotes a Tier label as though it were an uptime guarantee.
- The SLA omits the measurement formula or lists broad exclusions without examples.
- An audit report is offered without its scope, period, criteria, or exceptions.
- Security answers describe cameras and fences but not access authorization, log review, or equipment custody.
- Recovery objectives are stated without geographic dependencies, customer actions, or exercise evidence.
- Incident notification is promised “promptly” with no trigger, deadline, channel, or required content.
- Evidence is limited to marketing materials when the provider could supply controlled documents under confidentiality terms.
Use these gaps as negotiation points or as reasons to seek a different service design. A provider may be capable but unwilling to document the controls your risk program requires; that distinction belongs in the decision record.
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