Node4 - Latest News
One of our upstream transit providers, Cogent, will be performing maintenance on their core network between 1am and 7am on Sunday 28th. This work may cause some internet traffic to be re-routed via other providers during the maintenance window.
Regards,
Node4 Support
We are currently experiencing an issue with some datastream connections. Engineers are looking at the problem now and we will post an update shortly
N4 Support
Update: 12:30
Problem with ATM card has now been resolved. Dropped connections have been restored. The card crashed and reset. We have raised a ticket with the manufacturers but there is no suggestion that it is likely to reoccur. Outage was approx 5 mins.
N4 Support
05.30 This morning’s planned maintanance has now started.
07.30 We are curently over running on the planned maintenance window, however the majority of network changes have now been completed. More updates will follow.
11.50 Following this morning changes we experianced a problem with the BGP for Level3 in Manchester. This did not cause any loss of service. This issue has now been resolved and the maintenance has now been completed.
If you experiance any further issues then please contact Node4 Support (details on our web site www.node4.co.uk/support)
Regards,
Node4 Technical Support
Some customers may have experienced problems with Internet Transit to some destinations between 09.10 and 09.35 this morning (17th June). This problem was caused by a peering partner on a multilateral peering network who miss-configured their BGP updates and black holed some routes.
This BGP session has been disabled while this peering partner investigates their configuration issues.
Regards,
Node4 Support
Please be advised that our engineers need to undertake essential maintenance on our core router in Telehouse, London on Thursday 25 June. The work will be carried out between 05:00 - 06:00 on this date.
The work involves installing Operating System upgrades on our core router to provide additional security, fix some known issues and also to enable additional features for future use. This upgrade will result in your service being unavailable for approximately 2-5 minutes between the times stated above. Our engineers will ensure that any disruption to your service is kept to a minimum.
This will affect DSL customers for the period noted above. Colo, SIP and internet transit will not be affected
Node4 Tech Support
This work has now been rescheduled. It will now take place on Sunday 21st June (was 14th).
Node4 engineers will be performing core equipment upgrades on the Derby Data Centre on the morning of Sunday 21st June between 5am and 7.30am. During this time internet transit will experience some disruption for certian routes.
Further Information as follows:
This work will only affect internet transit (internet access), or those services which use internet transit (i.e. SIPLink). During the maintenance window we expect several short periods (less than 5 minutes) where internet transit to some destinations will be interrupted. This maintenance work is required to upgrade one of the core BGP routers in Derby, during this work Internet traffic will automatically re-route via other routers/paths.
Regards,
Node4 Support
The next 2-3 weeks will see the final commissioning work at our new state of the art datacentre in Wakefield. The exterior of the building and the compound are now complete.
We will complete the battery and UPS installation this week and commission the airconditioning shortly after that. We will be kitting out our new NOC and reception area next week.
The building will be cleaned by a team of specialist data centre cleaners to recognised ISO clean-room standards and the initial batch of comms equipment will be installed and configured ready for the first customers to move in
Here are some pictures of the cold aisle pods we have installed in the rooms. We have 2 rooms completed, but we have only installed the pods in one room for now, the other will follow shortly.
It’s been a little while since we posted any updates on the Wakefield Project, but things are progressing well.
The site now has a mains electricity supply and construction of all the internal rooms have been completed. The raised access floor is fitted throughout the first 2 rooms and the service corridors
The images above show some of the switchgear in our plantroom (this controls the power into the building including the UPSs, generators and mains feed). The Purple Gear is for our A feed and the Orange Gear is for the B feed.
Also shown are the raised access floor being laid in one of the smaller data halls and a completed floor.
There is also a picture of our security pod situated in reception. All visitors to the DC will have to go through the security pod to gain access to the data halls. This device prevents tailgating and allows us to track all customer and staff movements in and out of the data centre.
Ongoing tasks in the build now include:
Our first set of racks are being installed on Monday in our Cold Aisle Pods. Click here for more information on Cold Aisle Containment
We thought we would give you a quick update on the progress of DC3.
The site is on track to open at the end of April and things are now moving on very quickly. 2 out of the 4 generators were delivered last week along with the fuel tanks. Now they are all in position the contractors are working on the cabling ready for the arrival of the mains distribution pannels which are due to be installed W/C 23rd March. As you can see below the panels are currently being built and will be going through acceptance testing next week.
The brick built substation is also nearly complete ready for the installation of the dual HV switches next week.
Continuing the Green theme from the last post, I’d like to explain a bit about how our new air conditioning system gives us the best possible combination of performance, resilience, economy and flexibility.
Our Wakefield site makes use of a technology called free cooling. Well it’s not quite free (these things cost hundreds of thousands of pounds) but it is a highly efficient way of taking advantage of one of the main features of the UK climate. It’s cold most of the time!
Whenever the outside temperature is less than the temperature of the water coming back from the data centre, we don’t actively cool the water in our chillers. We let the atmosphere do the work for us. So for most day of the year (and pretty much every night) our chillers are doing very little work, but if it does get hot, they kick in to keep the air cool.
For resilience, each room has pairs of air conditioning units that are fed from different chillers. There is enough capacity to keep the rooms cool even if we lost ½ of the air con infrastructure. We also run the fans from the UPS system to keep the air moving at all times, even during a power failure.
In addition to all this, we are cutting the fan speeds needed to pressurise the raised floor void by using baffles under the floor space to direct cold air where it is needed. We can vary the fan speeds and the input temperatures to precisely control the conditions within the cold aisles. We are making use of Thermal Imaging technology to map our data centre airflow and temperature distribution to ensure the best possible environment for your equipment.
All in all we are doing everything we can to reduce our energy costs and carbon emissions. This is something we can pass on to our customers and, when carbon taxes start to take hold it could add up to some quite significant savings.
