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At 05:30 this morning a huge crane lifted our generator from it’s storage place nearby to the concrete pad and secure compound at the back of the Sheffield Data Centre.  It took a little time to plan, execute, beat the weather, and generally organise the lift – but it’s done and will be connected to the Automatic Transfer Switch shortly!

Not a great pic below, but it was practically dark when taken – the generator being lowered to it’s base:

Flying Generator

More pics and info will be available soon!

After several delays (mainly caused by bad weather, contractor delays, and Christmas!) we’ve finally had the footings dug out and concrete poured for the generator enclosure.

The grass banking was dug out on Tuesday 23rd, and concrete poured Thursday 25th.  Blockwork has been delivered and the enclosure itself is scheduled to be constructed next week.  Once the encloure is complete we’ll pull the thick generator cables through and move the generator itself into position.

We’re confident that (if there’s no more snow – which apparently doesn’t help concrete set!) the generator will be in position mid-March!

Digging out the footings

Ready for concrete

Concrete finally poured!

The generator, in storage. Waiting to be positioned.

We’ve had lots of enquiries for racks with power over 16A, some up to a full 32A.

As advertised we’re including an APC UPS into the base of each rack, providing power up to 16A.  We’ll include 12A in the monthly price of the rack and any extra power you need is charged extra.

This is fine for regular servers and devices where the total rack power is less than 16A, but with newer technologies such as blade servers and SAN storage more power is required.

We’ve futureproofed the design of the Sheffield Data Centre by including 32A Commando sockets under each rack, and adjacent racks are on different phases of electricity.   For an extra fee we’ll be providing options to have a full 32A supply into a rack, with dual-UPS’s, dual-PDU’s and dual-phase supplies.  Obviously the cost will be higher and more room will be taken up in the cabinet with UPS’s.  But for clients who want blades, disk arrays, storage robots etc… this will be an ideal option.

Why seperate UPS’s?

We’ve been asked “why seperate UPS’s per rack?” – the answer is simple – Scalability.

In order to scale the Sheffield Data Centre from 1 rack up to 25 racks easily without upgrading (and possibly causing an outage) on a central power supply, or even worse putting service at risk by having a central UPS which can’t supply enough power, each rack will have a local UPS with it’s own mains feed.

There is a cost advantage too, because each UPS is the same, battery packs will all be standard and we can keep costs down.  Helping to give you (the customer) a more stable, secure, cost-effective service!

Another milestone passed!  The computer room is on it’s own lighting and power circuits!  All the temporary lights and sockets have now been removed, and the final lighting grid (complete with emergency bulkheads) are in place.  The decorating is (nearly) complete – just the touch-ups left to do where people have been unkind enough to drill holes for wires and the like  ;-) 

 

Lights being installed in the computer room

Finished lights

After nearly a week of waiting (so much for the next day service!) the raised access floor arrives on site!  Thanks must go to the nice chap with the forklift too  :-)

Floor tiles arrive on site

Cabling works are scheduled to start straight after the bank holiday, with cable trays and commando sockets being installed as the floor goes down, next week is set to be another busy one… watch this space!!!

Sorry for the update delay!  Been a busy week on site but not much photo worthy…

We’ve had the first fix electrics installed in the office, and the second fix electrics installed in the loading bay and entrance hall.  The ceilings and office partition walls have been skim plastered rather than filled (this is what’s taken most of the week to organise), the steel fibre trunking is complete, and we’ve installed the Paxton Access Control units and the generator automatic transfer switch…

…and finally BT have made live the first of the copper circuits entering the unit.  We’ll use this for DSL for management access.

Loading bay construction ongoing

Generator transfer switch arrives on site

Access control system installed

Computer room ceiling plastering underway

Steel fibre ducting under raised floor complete

2nd fix electrics ongoing, sockets and light switches installed

...oh there it is.

Got a toy delivered to site... a brand new Cisco 3825 for the end of the fibre. It's gone into storage for "testing" or is that "playing"... definately "testing" :-)

Electrical works have also started with the lighting circuits and supplies to the generator.