Yesterday (22/08/2010) we successfully tested and failed-over the Sheffield Data Centre to backup generator power.
The culmination of over a years planning, and many hundreds of man-hours to implement a N+1 power system without downtime or service interruption was finally completed just after 1pm yesterday. Utility power was disconnected, the Automatic Transfer Switchgear started the generator, waited until it had stabilised, and then automatically threw the switches transferring the feed.
Testing over the last three weeks, including a battery of fresh testing yesterday ahead of the fail-over included auto start/stop, continuity, voltage & frequency, load testing, UPS testing, engine servicing etc…
The failover was repeated twice and we had the building totally generator powered for 15 minutes before switching back to utility (mains) power. The system is now set to automatic so in the (unlikely) event of a power cut we’ll fail-over to generator without human intervention.
Regular testing will ensure we’re always ready!
We did video the failover and take some stills, they’re in the process of being editited and we’ll put some images up on the blog soon.
The Sheffield Data Centre is now an N+1 power facility.
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