The Wakefield Data Centre, DC3 which is just outside Leeds is now open and welcoming new customers in.
The Mayor of Wakefield, Councillor Heather Hudson cut the ribbon alongside Node4’s MD, Andrew Gilbert, at the official opening event in July which was attended by around 100 invited customers and friends of the company, including special guests from the world of British Superbikes, Chris Walker and his team from Rob Mac Racing.
We are pleased that a substantial amount of the 450 rack capacity has already been sold.
DC3 is the next step in the development of Node4’s vision to be recognised as a leading data centre provider in the UK. The location of DC3 just outside the large city of Leeds helps us to expand our ever-growing customer base into the north of the UK.
The Wakefield data centre also allows us to provide a reliable and resilient disaster recovery solution not only to new customers, but also to existing customers at our Derby site to take advantage of the two locations.
DC3 is one of the first in the country to combine 2 of the latest energy saving technologies throughout the site: cold aisle containment and free cooling chillers. By using these methods, we hope to make DC3 one of the most energy efficient data centres in Europe.
Cold aisle containment is still a new but relatively simple idea to get the best efficiency from air conditioning units, ensuring that air at the most optimum temperature flows through the servers. Ultima Compact Freecool air conditioning units from Airedale International have been chosen to ensure that sound and vibrations are kept to a minimum, which in turn maximises the energy efficiency of the units without compromising the capacity.
You can find more details on the facility at http://www.node4.co.uk/products/dc3
If you would like to arrange a tour of the facility please contact the sales team on 0845 123 2222.
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:
- Failover testing of mains / generator power
- Connection of power into the data halls
- Installation of CCTV and other security measures
- Installation of FM200 system and VESDA
- Installation of Comms Fibre
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.
By Rik WIlliams, Data Centre Operations Manager
How do you make a 3.5MVA N+1 data center Green, yet still cost effective?
That’s the big question that Node4 have been wrestling with over the last few months, but we reckon we’ve come up with the solution. Our brand new data centre (DC3) in Wakefield will be one of the first in the country to combine 2 of the latest energy saving technologies throughout the site: cold aisle containment and free cooling chillers.
By using these methods, we hope to make DC3 one of the most energy efficient data centres in Europe with a PUE of 1.3 to 1.4 (i.e. only about 1/3 of the total power to the site is used on cooling and power conversion).
Click for Cold Aisle Containment Diagram
Cold aisle containment is a new but relatively simple idea to get the best efficiency from air conditioning units. The data hall is set up as a standard hot / cold aisle arrangement but the cold aisles are then sealed off at either end and a transparent ceiling is installed to trap the cold air in front of the racks where it is needed the most. The rest of the room becomes a hot aisle as the air is returned to the air conditioning units, so the room itself will be between 30 and 35 degrees C.
Although that might be a bit warmer than the average techie is used to, the air flowing through the front of all the servers will be about 20 degrees C which is just as it should be.
This kind of arrangement gives a number of advantages over a non-contained room
- Hot air can’t re-circulate and mix with the cold air. We are only cooling the air once
- We can use a higher output air temperature from the air conditioning unit, saving on power
- Temperature differences between the top and bottom of the racks are much smaller meaning that equipment at the top of the racks is less likely to fail
We estimate that this could save between 40% and 60% on our air conditioning bill, and will be far more environmentally friendly than a normal data centre.
We’ll talk more about how we actually cool the air using our new free cooling chillers and take advantage of the Yorkshire weather in a future blog post.
We are proud to announce that in January 2009, Node4 will be opening our 3rd Datacentre just outside Leeds. We have witnessed a rise in demand for data centre space, whether that be for colocation, managed hosting or a hosted telephony, since we opened DC2 in November last year. So to meet this demand we are currently developing a site just off the M62, an easily accessible location for the whole country.
We estimate that the new facility will have the capacity to hold 500 racks with some private suites available on request. DC3 will continue with, and also improve on the high standards Node4 already have in our existing data centres with many features being N+1 and in some cases N+N. There will also be multiple 10Gb links between the new site and Node4 headquarters, giving our existing customers the option to spread their business servers across two sites.
At the moment the steel structure of the building is in place, with architectural plans currently being finalised.
Site Spec
- On-site technical support team
- J32 of M62 Wakefield Europort
- (19,000 sq ft) net capacity
- Upto 4 separate Data Halls
- 24 Hour Manned Security
- 24 Hour Technical Support
- 4 × 1Mw MTU Generators (N+1)
- A Feeds Via 7 × 200kVA Chloride UPS (N+1)
- B Feeds Via Diverse 7 × 200kVA Chloride UPS (N+1)
- Full Ring Connection to National Grid with dual 3Mw transformers
- N+1 Airedale Ultima FreeCool HVAC Feed Via A+B Power System
- FM200 Fire Suppression + VESDA
- CCTV, Door Access + Air Lock Style Access & Intruder Alarms
- Up to 32A A+B supplies Per Cab
- Diverse Fibre Entry
- 14.5kN/m² raised floor system
