EN 50600

EN 50600 is a series of European (CENELEC) standards that define requirements and recommendations for data centre facilities. Unlike the Uptime Institute Tier model, EN 50600 uses a class system (1–4) for each infrastructure sub-system independently — power supply, cooling, physical security, telecommunications cabling, management — allowing different class ratings for different systems within the same facility.

Class 1 provides basic protection; Class 4 provides the highest resilience with fault tolerance and concurrent maintainability. EN 50600-2-1 (power) and EN 50600-2-2 (cooling) are the most commonly specified. The standard is increasingly referenced in European government procurement and in planning conditions for new data centre developments, particularly in France, Germany and the Nordics.