University Hosue Data Centre had a major re-furbishment in 2015, where all aspects of the data centre have been replaced.

This is a purpose built facility to provide the University with a modern and efficient facility to securely house server, storage and network equipment. The facility will compliment Argent Court data centre and is designed to provide expansion space for up to 10 years to cope with the anticipated growth and expansion of both the University and IT Services.

The re-furbishment was completed in April 2015 with live services being installed almost straight away/

The facility contains 35 x 19" 46U 1200mm deep server cabinets. Each server cabinet has 4 x 32amp power feeds, 2 of these feed a PDU within the server cabinet. Each PDU has multiple 10amp and 16amp IEC sockets. Five of these racks will be for networking and infrastructure, leaving 30 for server and storage equipment.

The 35 cabinets are split into 2 pods of 18 and 17 cabinets and each pod can accommodate approx 100Kw of power load. This works out to approximately 6Kw per cabinet, although should more power be required in certain racks, this can be accommodated.

Each PDU is monitored to ensure overloading cant occur. They are also fed from different power supplies to ensure resilience and minimal downtime for maintenance.

Each cabinet is provided with a minimum of 72 x CAT6a RJ45 outlets allowing for up to 10GB/s transmission speeds. These CAT6a outlets are connected back to a central network provision within the facilty. Both OM3 and OS2 fibre connections are also provided to each cabinet. These provide optical links out to the other data centres and other locations both on and off campus.

Cooling is provided to both pods via indirect adiabatic cooling systems located in plant space externally. This has been designed to use a "hot aisle" contained system providing on air to the front of the servers and other equipment at 24°C. The indirect adiabatic cooling system has been designed in a N+1 configuration to allow for faults and maintenance on the cooling system to be carried out with little affect to the running of the data centre.

A false floor has been installed with networking and water services routed within the floor void. Power is routed at high level above the cabinets. Flood detection is installed within the floor void.

Both a VESDA (Very Early Smoke detection Aspirating) system and fire gas suppression system has been installed to minimise any damage to installed equipment from fire.

UPS and Generator Provision

UPS and generator provision has been provided as follows:

A UPS has been installed to provide continuous power to all critical loads in the event of a power outage. The UPS also "smooths" the power coming into the data centre to compensate for any spikes on the incoming power supply which could cause damage to the IT equipment installed within.

The UPS is designed to provide continuous power to critical loads for up to 30 minutes in the event of the incoming or generator supply failing. The UPS consists of 3 separate units running in parallel in a N+1 set up. This allows for one UPS to be off line at any time to allow for faults and maintenance to take place without reducing cover on the critical load.

A 500Kva standby generator set has been installed to provide power to the whole facility in the event of loss of the utility power supply. In conjunction with the UPS, continuous power will be provided to the data centre without loss of service in the event of a power outage.

The generator has its own fuel tank giving a run time on full load of around 72 hours.

Should you require any more information on the data centre or would like a tour of the facility, please contact the service owner for data centres and infrastructure, Steve Silver at steve dot silver at warwick dot ac dot uk