The Reliance House Datacentre - Work well underway

I'm pleased to announce that work on our second Newcastle upon Tyne datacentre facility 'Reliance House' is well under way. The facility is located within minutes of the city centre and benefits from improved security and connectivity options.

Over the past few weeks major civils works has taken place to bring connectivity to the site. The facility is located around 150 metres away from a major fibre route out of the Newcastle city centre, where numerous third-party providers have fibre (including C&W, Geo, Level3). We took the decision to employ directional drilling as opposed to trenching the 150 metres required to install a private duct back to our facility - this will be used by the providers to bring their fibre optic cables directly to our site.

The work was undertaken by a specialist firm and completed within a day, as opposed to the 4-5 days predicted for trenching the same run - with significantly less disruption. It was impressive to see the drill head appearing in the receive pit 150 metres away with pin-point accuracy!

Other work included on-site duct installation for BT Openreach, Virgin Media, and Northern Powergrid (who will supply utility power to the facility from the adjacent sub-station)

In the coming weeks work will be concentrating on the internal fit out with internal power distribution, fire suppression and flooring systems being installed.

Cold Aisle Containment at NE5 Datacentre

Over the past few weeks we've been working installing our in-house cold-aisle containment in to the NE5 Datacentre facility in Newcastle upon Tyne. The results are beyond what we expected...

The design of the modern day server and rack mount equipment means air is pulled through the server from front and exhausted at the rear of the server cooling down the critical server components, therefore it is vital that the air at the front of the racks is at an optimum temperature and humidity.

Without cold aisle containment the air-conditioned air mixed with other warmer air from hot aisles and the rest of the room, the result is that the ambient temperature in the cold aisle increases, leading to less effective cooling. Cold aisle containment ensures the air entering the cold aisle is kept segregated from the other warmer air as much as possible.

The key to cold aisle containment is to minimise cold air leakage from the aisle. Above each rack plastic sheeting has been installed to prevent air escaping, and at the entrance to a cold aisle we have installed a PVC Curtain, this allows access to the cold aisle but minimises air loss. Within each rack unused space has been blanked off. The maximises air flow through the equipment installed within the racks. The cold aisle is also kept at a positive pressure to the datacentre room by ensuring slightly more air enters the cold aisle than leaves through the equipment in the racks, assisting with air-flow.

Previously our Air Handling Units recirculated the air within the datacentre, temporary duct work has been installed to the units to circulate fresh outdoor air effectively providing totally free cooling when the outdoor temperature is low.

The results so far over the past few weeks have shown a 60% increase in the efficiency of our HVAC system. This is probably helped by our fairly poor summer weather at the moment.

We've had a few issues along the way, mainly with rack-mount equipment incorrectly mounted in reverse (more specifically switches installed at the rear of racks), but these have been overcome and more work will continue in the coming weeks with installation of permanent ducting.

2011 NE5 Datacentre is on the map, and is looking at a bright future!

Well 2010 was a great year for us at NE5 and we would like to say a big thank you to everyone that has helped us along the way. But with the market becoming ever more crowded we now have to knuckle down hard to stay ahead of the game. It has becoming increasingly more apparent that the London Price bug is creeping up the country and more and more of the North West datacentres are now adopting similar pricing, this is only adding to the increasing justification for businesses to source outside these areas to achieve fair and affordable pricing.

Again we have seen a major development over the past few years in the pricing of connectivity, receiving rocketing price cuts due to a saturated wholesale market place. What seems very apparent that many of the providers / resellers are not passing these excellent savings onto the end clients. The Datacentre market in the north east of England has seen a massive increase in business and enquires for these reasons and we can only see it become more feasible to businesses to commute that little bit further to take advantage of the clear price differences between the northern datacentres compared to the North West and Southern facilities with regards to rack space, collocation and managed services.

With that said we are geared up and ready for 2011 and invite businesses to contact us to receive information and pricing for our NE5 Facility to see how this can be a very lucrative investment to you and your organisation.

enquiries@wildcard.net.uk

0845 165 15 10