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In pictures: Inside ASG's $13m Perth data centre

Australian IT services firm goes it alone with new data centre.

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Welcome to ASG’s $13 million data centre in Bentley Technology Park in Perth, Western Australia. Here we see a view from the ASG board room onto the blinking lights of one of two data halls inside the facility. The free-standing site was selected due to power and fibre diversity and, for security reasons, the safe distance between the facility and its nearest neighbours. A substation has been built on-site, and other energy-hungry computing facilities are located nearby.

The data centre is secured into the side of a hill, with anti-ram bollards and no signage or windows. Once inside, those with authorised access need to be signed in, and it is protected by biometric and smart card access and a network of video cameras.

Some 26 video cameras cover just about every angle, are monitored 24x7, and backed up. But also note the white sensor in the photograph – it detects movement. This is predominantly being used as an energy saving measure – lights inside the facility switch off if nobody has entered a given room within five minutes.

Despite the extensive security on offer, some customers still choose cages. This one belongs to an anchor tenant in WA’s utilities sector. It's a smart strategy to have your local power utility as a customer.

The data halls are built on a 900mm raised floor, with all power running under the floor and all data cabling overhead. Nandan Thakar, national infrastructure architect for ASG said he and engineers at Norman Disney Young had assessed more energy efficient options such as pods and free cooling, but Perth’s hot climate didn’t make them worth the investment. “Our goal was to have the PUE [power usage effectiveness] as low as possible,” he said. “Before all the customer gear is migrated in, it is about 1.7. At full load, we will have the PUE down to 1.6. For a data centre of this size, located in Perth, that is about as good as it is going to get. We are not in a cool zone where we can do free air. But you still try and do as much as you can.”

Some of ASG’s largest customers have already moved in.

ASG claim the facility is “90 percent committed” to existing customers. Thakar said he expects many will shift their gear in over the Christmas break when IT shops take mandatory leave.

ASG offers multiple power density zones on traditional raised floors to allow its enterprise and government customers to move in just about any legacy kit they wish. This photo best illustrates the lack of uniformity of racks. “Some of our customers have been in the same data centres for 15 years,” Thakar explained. “We want to take our customers and move them out of risk - and the first risk mitigation strategy is to move everything as is, because the risk at their current data centres is very high. We then take them on a transformation - that usually means we virtualise and hopefully reduce their footprint. If that requires us to create a high density environment within the data halls, we can do that. We can create a data centre within a data centre.”

Fibre awaits customers yet to move in.

Adjacent to the loading dock is a staging area, which leads straight into one of the data halls.

Every time ASG commissions a new customer in the facility, staff replace existing whole tiles with tiles fitted with brush seals [pictured] for running power feeds, in an attempt to maintain consistent air pressure in the facility.

Each data hall has a dedicated point of presence (PoP) for housing telco equipment. Telstra, Amcom and Nextgen are all on-site.

Fibre and copper each enter the data centre via two separate entry points – here you can see the fibre in the yellow trays and copper in white trays. Why are they separated? “Copper and fibre have their own bend radius,” Thakar explained. “Bend them together and fibre may break. You try and design this in such a way to make sure you don't have to touch things for years, so it is worth that investment in separate fibre and copper ducts.”

Cooling units on the server room floor.

Power PDUs on the server room floor.

ASG is currently running small, portable heaters in the facility to keep data halls at 23 degrees until more customer kit is migrated in. The chillers – located on the roof of the data centre – might otherwise cut in and out with such a low load to cool. This shouldn’t be an issue for too much longer.

Plant is kept in multiple rooms behind the two data floors and the equipment is completely isolated in the interests of redundancy. Each half of these plant rooms serve one data hall - that means UPS systems, switchboards, batteries, generators etc are all separated by about 30 metres and several walls. But each of the dedicated plant serving each server room has been spec’d to have enough excess capacity to cover both floors, should the corresponding set of plant go down.

ASG data centre facilities manager Chris Doig [pictured] was hired prior to the build to be completely across the planning and engineering phase of the project.

In the event of a power failure, ASG’s UPS systems can run with battery for an hour today, 30 minutes once the facility is full. It takes around one minute for the diesel generators, located outside, to kick in. This gives some precious buffer in case there is a problem with the generators starting up.

ASG has chosen to combine a VESDA (very early smoke detection) warning system and Proinert gas for fire suppression. There is no presence of overhead water for fire suppression, for fears that an error could ruin racks worth of gear with costs in the millions of dollars.

As always, there is two sets of everything.

ASG has a network operations centre for its managed services customers located directly on top of the facility.

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In pictures: Inside ASG's $13m Perth data centre

Australian IT services firm goes it alone with new data centre.

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