The Orbit data centre officially opened in April 2009 and 18 months on the second and third data floors in this state of the art facility have been commissioned bringing the available facility capacity up to over 500 racks - only one data floor remains uncommissioned.
The Orbit Centre set new standards in the New Zealand data centre market place and ensures Datacom continues to offer its customers the premium services they require. Underpinned by this data centre, Datacom continues to build out a comprehensive array of virtualised and shared hosting services designed for the needs of its corporate and government customers.
Site Considerations
The site for the centre was carefully selected to ensure operations are not compromised by adjacent land owner activities. Permissible activities on neighbouring properties are restricted by local by-law and property covenant to those of a light commercial nature. To further enhance security the centre has a high perimeter fence, an access controlled gate, a 5-7 meter set back from boundary to building, ground lighting, and within the building itself a multi-zone access control system. Cameras monitor activities both within and outside the centre and the centre are manned continuously 24/7. Datacom has worked with government agencies to ensure their security requirements are met.
At over 50 meters above sea level there are no concerns that the site will be threatened by rising sea levels or tsunami events.
Most importantly the site is well connected from a telecommunications perspective. Fibre networks from all the major providers are in close proximity - as are their related core network nodes. Vector Communication’s new managed Gigabit service is available for customers that require the highest speed connectivity.
The relatively central location minutes from the Northern motorway means that third party service and spares for both data centre plant and IT equipment are readily available if required.
Sustainability
Energy efficiency and eco-friendliness were paid special attention during the design process. Datacom is keen to assist its customers with their sustainability initiatives and understands the social responsibilities companies must assume if they are to prosper. The centre collects and reuses rain water where possible and has been constructed in an environmentally sensitive manner.
Data centres consume relatively large amounts of energy and therefore are a focus of conservation efforts. Surprisingly, in most current generation centres only 50% of the energy supplied to a site actually makes it to the computers with the rest being lost in powering the cooling systems, electrical system inefficiencies, and other overheads.
In the new Orbit Centre components have been carefully selected to ensure optimum energy efficiency. Electricity to the centre is supplied by Meridian Energy who offers the greenest energy supply available.
The centre has been designed such that when conditions are appropriate outside side air can be used to directly cool the equipment within the centre. Outside air is drawn in, scrubbed using high grade filters (much higher than would normally be found in a data centre), conditioned to meet humidity and temperature requirements, passed through the equipment floor and then expelled – rather than being re-circulated. It turns out that Auckland’s climate is one of the most appropriate in the world for fresh air cooling - it being neither too hot, nor too cold, or too dry. Typically data centres run with equipment inlet side temperatures of about 23 degrees C and generally Auckland’s air temperature is well below this. We expect considerable energy savings over time.
Of course if these savings aren’t passed back to our customers they are of little consequence. Consistent with our general philosophy on third party costs Datacom passes the benefit of all energy savings back to its customers.
We also recognise that evolving server and virtualisation technologies from companies such as VMware is providing the flexibility to selectively take servers out of a processing pool and be powered down with the objective of saving energy they would normally consume while idle. For this reason each power feed in the Orbit Centre is fitted with an energy used (kilowatt hours) meter. This enables power use to be accurately monitored by tariff band and savings achieved passed back to individual customers.
High Availability Features
Service availability is of real concern to all IT managers and the Orbit Centre has been designed to provide the highest levels available. A secondary but no less important design requirement is that any component in the centre can be replaced without service interruption but also without compromising an N+1 level of redundancy.
Each subsystem has been considered. Dual feed power is supplied to each rack from an independent bank of UPS. Each power source has its own main board and its own generator. A spare generator is available to automatically take over should a primary fail. 80,000 litres of diesel will be held on-site.
The air-conditioning system is built around a chilled water ring main architecture that provides resiliency to failure and allows futures upgrades if these are required to be undertaken without service disruption. Multiple chillers, coils, and air handlers provide an N+2 level of resiliency to failure. The fresh air cooling system which operates independently of the mechanical systems provides a further level of comfort.
All areas of the facility are covered by fire protection systems – inert gas in the data centre itself, water mist in the generator rooms, and sprinklers in the office complex. Conventional smoke detectors exist throughout the centre. Within the equipment areas a super sensitive Vesda system provides early warning of any trouble.
The IL3 structural rating of the building provides extra protection against earthquakes. All external walls are constructed of concrete panels and a strengthened double skin roof provides extra protection from the elements. Datacom personnel are on site 24 hours 7 days a week to ensure all systems are operating as required.
Key Attributes of the Orbit Centre Include:
Capacity to accommodate 700 racks with no practical weight restrictions.
IL3 certified structural strength (more strength than a normal commercial building).
Flexibility to accommodate essentially any type of rack or equipment.
Provision for caged customer specific zones.
A site power capacity of 8MVA with the ability to support individual racks, without special assistance, of up to 15kw.
Provision for in rack cooling systems.
A dedicated power feed from the local electrical substation.
Tier-3+ (nearly Tier-4 in all respects) plant redundancy.
Inert gas fire protection.
Dual feed redundant power by default to all rack locations.
24hr by 7 day on-site operational management.