Customers have requested a number of options for power delivered to their cabs recently. Our first blade server required twin three phase connections. The two cream cables are the existing single phase connections to power the rest of the rack and the two black cables are the three phase connections for the blade chassis. This HP chassis takes 2.5kW of power.

One customer asked for remotely switchable and metered power distribution units to be insatalled in their racks. They can measure power and power cycle servers remotely using these PDUs

Many customers are installing -48V supplies in their racks for telecommunications equipment. We are currently invetigating the possibility of installing a common -48V service within our building so that customers do not have to install their own on a cab by cab basis. This is a dual PSU configuration. Notice that the actual voltage is -54.5V rather that -48V. Confusing isn’t it?

In this example the customer uses a static switch to power the -48V supply from both A and B power.

As CIX ramps up, we are now adding more than one customer per week. For example, we spent this weekend migrating 10 x 1U HP servers, associated switches and NAS into a half rack space in our data centre. The photographs below show the front and rear of the installation.

Power consumption for this configuration is 2.5kW. These servers are configured to offer fully redundant firewall, virus and spam filtering for up to 100,000 emails per hour.

It is easy to get the front of the servers looking tidy.

Making the rear look neat is a little more difficult.

Early this morning this mail filtering system went live without a hitch.

Over the next two weeks we will be migrating a six rack customer into CIX. This is our largest project to date. The installation involves more than 1,000 cable connections in our infrastructure database and on completion these six racks will consume a total of 26kW of power and will require more than 100MBits/second of connectivity.

Busy times!

I came to Interop this week to check out some of the latest technologies in the Data Center space. It was interesting to see APC’s Hot Aisle Containment kit (see below).

I was particularly interested in it because in CIX we have decided to go with containing the cold aisle instead of the hot aisle.

I spoke to one of the APC guys and asked why they decided to contain the hot aisle. He said it is more efficient for their equipment because they have the have the air handling units in-rack. Air handling units work more efficiently the warmer the air they get so it makes sense for APC to contain the warm air, direct it to the air handling units and benefit from the efficiencies.

In our case our air handling units are in room as opposed to being in rack so it makes sense for us to contain the cold aisle and vent the hot air to the room so we can benefit from the efficiencies of our air handling units taking in warmer air and we also get free cooling from Cork’s ambient temperature of 10C!

There was a major power cut on the northside of Cork city yesterday. According to ESB Networks the problem occurred when a digger cut through a cable at 12:06 yesterday afternoon. 2,500 homes in the area were affected and power was restored at 13:02.

CIX was completely unaffected by the power cut because as soon as the power dropped, CIX’s UPS’s and batteries automatically took over running the facility. Within 15 seconds the diesel generator had come on line and commenced powering the data centre.

We run scheduled tests on the diesel generator every weekend where we simulate outages and log the results but there is nothing like an actual unplanned outage to really test your system.

We now have four telcos who have a POP in CIX!

The four telcos in question are Smart Telecom, Verizon, Magnet Networks, and Complete Telecoms.

This has happened so quickly (from when we first started having discussions with the telcos) that e|net have decided now to put a POP in CIX as well.

We still have plenty of room in our telecoms Meet Me area and fully expect to add more telcos in the next few weeks.

We posted a photo of this door to our MV Switch room just before Christmas but unfortunately we didn’t check the spelling on the sign before we put it up (competent was spelt competant!) and we were on the receiving end of some funny blog posts as a result!

As always, when we mess up, we ‘fess up and get it sorted, so without further ado, say hello to the all new Great Big Red door (for competent persons only)!

Since Cork Internet eXchange has had its Medium Voltage (MV) equipment connected to the grid by ESB Networks, access to the the MV Switch room has had to be restricted. Previously we were able to bring people through the MV room and explain it to visitors but now that the equipment is live, that is no longer possible.

Because of this, we decided to do a video tour of the MV switch room so people can see the infrastructure online. We used my Nokia N95 phone to take the video and software from Qik to stream the video live to the Internet as we were taking it.

As well as streaming the video live, Qik allows people watching live to ask questions and have them display on the phone’s screen so during this video you will hear me relaying questions and comments from viewers.

After going through the MV Switch Gear, the batteries and the UPS’s, one of the viewers expressed a desire to see the Network Operation Centre (NOC) so we walked through to the NOC and gave a quick tour of that too.

This is a window looking into our transformer room. The window is made of a composite material called Pyroglaze. It is fire rated to withstand very high temperatures.

Inside the transformer room you can see the first of our transformers. It is a 1MW transformer and it is filled with oil (which is used for cooling).

The room is designed to take a total of three 1MW transformers.

The window serves as an inspection window for the transformer room, obviating the need to enter the room in the event of an incident which is a significant safety advantage.

The CIX UPS’ were finally commissioned during the week – wohoo!

In this photo you can see the commissioning engineer Paul working on the two UPS’.

The UPS are 2 x 200kVA GE UPS’. They are designed to be clustered and are the first of 8 (4 for the A power and 4 for the B). Each line will support 800kVA.

As part of the finalising of our electrical fit-out we had to install two of these great big red doors (two doors to give a second exit route in the event of an emergency):

What is behind it?

The door is to keep unauthorised personnel away from the medium voltage (MV) switch gear.

The MV switch gear protects against over-voltage, over-current and earth faults. It is designed to protect against disturbances on the grid and disturbances caused by us.