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Demand for rack space has been amazing. Another 37 racks arrived yesterday and are mostly bayed awaiting the completion of the data cabling and power to their rack positions. Both are well advanced and should be completed next week, now that the racks are in place.

The first customer in these racks (in rows 3 & 4) starts moving in mid next week! That's just over quarter of the new racks gone in one hit!





Below is a photo of one of the FM-200 fire suppression bottles - the facility employs 4 FM-200 bottles to supply the gas to the 3 areas (underfloor, abovefloor and electrical switch room).



All up, around 950kg of FM-200 gas. The red FM-200 bottle in the photo contains 334kg of gas, and weighs 563kg overall.

The black bottles are nitrogen bottles - these are used to provide additional pressure to push the FM-200 through the pipe runs to the gas heads.

We're told that our above-floor FM-200 system in DC3 is the largest single FM-200 system in Brisbane, and one of only a small handful of nitrogen assisted systems in the country.

Other works that have been completed include the door open alarms and the security cameras (all 30 of them, all with infra-red illumination). A sample of what we can see is below.



This a low resolution montage - the actual resolution is around 4 times what you see here. Some of the images are black and white because the lights are off - in normal light they're colour.

PIPE also welcomes on-board Brian Redding, starting this coming Monday, to take on the position of Datacentre Manager, managing all of PIPE's datacentre assets nationally.]]> http://www.pipenetworks.com/dc3/index.php?entry=entry070901-100224 PIPE Networks Sat, 01 Sep 2007 00:02:24 GMT http://www.pipenetworks.com/dc3/comments.php?y=07&m=09&entry=entry070901-100224 http://www.pipenetworks.com/dc3/index.php?entry=entry070810-073243
The copper data cabling for the first stage is all but complete - the Krone Highband 25 system was installed and passed it's Category-6 certification last week.



The overhead fibre tray is almost complete - only a couple of 45 degree bends still pending in the entry foyer. Waterfalls are on order to allow services to be neatly dropped into customer racks.





The success of DC3 has been amazing - so much so that we've already started fitting out the next two rows of racks (another 37 racks). The cable trays and fibre trays for these next two rows are already in place.]]> http://www.pipenetworks.com/dc3/index.php?entry=entry070810-073243 PIPE Networks Thu, 09 Aug 2007 21:32:43 GMT http://www.pipenetworks.com/dc3/comments.php?y=07&m=08&entry=entry070810-073243 http://www.pipenetworks.com/dc3/index.php?entry=entry070629-114237







]]> http://www.pipenetworks.com/dc3/index.php?entry=entry070629-114237 PIPE Networks Fri, 29 Jun 2007 01:42:37 GMT http://www.pipenetworks.com/dc3/comments.php?y=07&m=06&entry=entry070629-114237 http://www.pipenetworks.com/dc3/index.php?entry=entry070623-071119


Photo 1: We have power to the facility (we've had the power on for a good few days now)




Photo 2: This is one of the three power analysers we have on the supply switchboard. This photo was taken pretty early on when the only load was the lights. On launch day we were consuming around 75A/phase. To put that in perspective, that's roughly 25% of what DC1 & DC2 use combined (and they're full). DC3 is currently empty! These analysers also give us an indication of the number of kilowatt hours we've consumed, the power factor of the load, and a multitude of other parameters.




Photo 3: Unless you were at the launch, this is probably the first time you've seen the first two rows of B&R racks. There's more racks to the left of the photo - I just couldn't get far enough back to fit them all into the frame.




Photo 4: This is the first 10 gigabit link into DC3. This link is the first of two fully diverse circuits that will link DC3 into PIPE's metro ethernet network. On launch day we had a single 1 gigabit link that was used primarily to carry the live video for the videocast (it also carried VoIP traffic from the phone extension we put on-site for the day).




Photo 5: This is the first couple of single core gigabit circuits into our Foundry MPLS router at DC3. The lefthand circuit is where the intercapital MPLS network cross connects to the Brisbane metro network (there's currently 3 of these at 3 different sites). The righthand link connects the MPLS router back to another MPLS router in DC1, and the spare GBIC is for a fully diverse link back to the same MPLS router at DC1. There's another link being installed shortly to yet another site.
]]> http://www.pipenetworks.com/dc3/index.php?entry=entry070623-071119 PIPE Networks Fri, 22 Jun 2007 21:11:19 GMT http://www.pipenetworks.com/dc3/comments.php?y=07&m=06&entry=entry070623-071119 http://www.pipenetworks.com/dc3/index.php?entry=entry070620-162921
mms://bcast2.qld.abbn.tv/PipeDC3Vi­deo [Windows Media]

Audio version of stream:

mms://bcast2.qld.abbn.tv/PipeDC3Au­dio [Windows Media]
..or..
bcast1.qld.abbn.tv:8000/listen.pls [Shoutcast/Winamp]
]]> http://www.pipenetworks.com/dc3/index.php?entry=entry070620-162921 PIPE Networks Wed, 20 Jun 2007 06:29:21 GMT http://www.pipenetworks.com/dc3/comments.php?y=07&m=06&entry=entry070620-162921 http://www.pipenetworks.com/dc3/index.php?entry=entry070618-161527
The carrier neutral facility will provide critical infrastructure to support the current and future growth, and requirements for secure and reliable data storage facing the ICT industry and local companies.

“Queensland continues to grow with the support of strong government policy and the need for services is driving a huge increase in ICT capacity. Our latest Data Centre will make available more than 350sqm of much needed commercial data centre space” PIPE Networks Managing Director, Mr Bevan Slattery said.

In an industry where such fit-out processes commonly take in excess of 6 months, the challenge was set to finish the facility in only 60 days. The opening ceremony will represent the 66th day since the challenge was set.
]]> http://www.pipenetworks.com/dc3/index.php?entry=entry070618-161527 PIPE Networks Mon, 18 Jun 2007 06:15:27 GMT http://www.pipenetworks.com/dc3/comments.php?y=07&m=06&entry=entry070618-161527 http://www.pipenetworks.com/dc3/index.php?entry=entry070615-183414
Builders have finished the wall on which communications will be terminated, and we have arranged for the mains power to go on tonight. Our fibre splicing technician also continued work on the connections (we have included some photos of his work below, as requested in an earlier comment by one of the blog watchers). The only things left to happen here at DC3 is for fire suppression pipe work to have it’s finishing touches, the air-conditioning to be fired up, security installation to be completed and the final clean of the site.

As part of the mains power-up later today, and the final clean up of the ceiling, our trusty web cams will be decommissioned. Thank you for your keen interest in watching the goings-on of DC3 via the images these cameras brought to us. We have a complete history of the web cam photos, and we’ll be on the hunt to find a tool that will take these thousands of images and collate them to make a movie - which perhaps we can review come time for our next Data Centre build.

Yesterday we said a huge thank you to all the contractors that made the DC3 build run as smoothly as it has, but we didn’t mention the man that has managed the daily fit-out, wrote most of these blog entries and made such a momentous build possible. Thank you to Bob Purdon, our GM of Managed Infrastructure, for his unwavering dedication to the insane task at hand, his 6am starts and 9pm finishes, his good humour when faced with yet another DC drama, and for being the man with the golden fingers every time our web cams went off line. We appreciate your efforts!







Stay tuned for more information on the official opening event being held next Wednesday...

]]> http://www.pipenetworks.com/dc3/index.php?entry=entry070615-183414 PIPE Networks Fri, 15 Jun 2007 08:34:14 GMT http://www.pipenetworks.com/dc3/comments.php?y=07&m=06&entry=entry070615-183414 http://www.pipenetworks.com/dc3/index.php?entry=entry070614-203308
What's interesting to note is that this 60 days started on the day we kicked the project implementation off. Counting from the day the contractors actually got underway, you'll see we've accomplished a lot in 49 construction days.

We're remarkably close to completion - our major delay at the moment is connection of the electrical supply to the main switchboard - almost everything else electrical is installed and awaiting mains power so it can be commissioned and handed over. Mains connection is scheduled for Saturday.



Likewise, the air conditioning commissioning and handover is waiting primarily on mains power. The refrigerant lines have been pressure tested with nitrogen and are currently being evaculated (vacuum pumps remove all the air, and in turn moisture, from the lines in preparation for them being charged with refrigerant). For those wondering, the orange circular cable isn't power cable - it's a 2 core cable for signalling that's unrelated to the operation of the A/C unit itself.

We've started doing mock ups of rack positioning so everyone can see how it's going to look, but we can't bay the racks together just yet because we will need to move them on Monday while the cleaners are in. These specialist datacentre cleaners will be lifting all the tiles and wiping and vacuuming all the surfaces. Once this is complete, the PIPE infrastructure team will hit the room and bay everything together in their correct locations.

The fire suppression guys still have a reasonable amount of work to get done - the FM-200 pipework is well underway, as is the VESDA detection pipework. It'll come together pretty quickly though.

The internal wall that our structured cabling infrastructure is to be installed on was partly erected today. The other side of it will be erected most likely tomorrow.

The fire doors were hung today - one set of double doors for the datacentre entry doorway, and one set of double doors for the UPS room doorway.

Painters will be back over the next day or two to touch up those spots we've managed to get dirty and to patch holes that were created when legacy cables and pipes were removed.



Above are 3 of the contractors working on-site - this was taken tonight as they were packing up for the day. There's many more of them, but most had already left for the day.

These contractors have done an amazing job of keeping the project moving in the face of externally imposed delays. ]]> http://www.pipenetworks.com/dc3/index.php?entry=entry070614-203308 PIPE Networks Thu, 14 Jun 2007 10:33:08 GMT http://www.pipenetworks.com/dc3/comments.php?y=07&m=06&entry=entry070614-203308 http://www.pipenetworks.com/dc3/index.php?entry=entry070613-143622
Today the first shipment of customer racks arrived (50 in total), there will be another delivery tomorrow morning (of approximately 30). For those of you watching the web cams and laughing at us as we tried to get them through the construction zone out the back door, they are now safely inside DC3 and we have begun positioning them into their rows.

Security installation is well underway. As is work on the fire suppression system with another big chunk of pipe work being completed today.

Also of note is the entry ramp into the data centre which was constructed today and will be completed tomorrow.

So with the final sprint towards Day 60 of this challenge, we wait and see (fingers crossed) as to how much we can get completed by the end of tomorrow…

The first delivery of BNR customer racks arrived nice and early at 6.30 this morning.


You can see the ceiling is noticeably less cluttered compare to previous photos after the removal of un-necessary cabling this afternoon.]]> http://www.pipenetworks.com/dc3/index.php?entry=entry070613-143622 PIPE Networks Wed, 13 Jun 2007 04:36:22 GMT http://www.pipenetworks.com/dc3/comments.php?y=07&m=06&entry=entry070613-143622 http://www.pipenetworks.com/dc3/index.php?entry=entry070612-140243
Instead of having separate GPS shelves for the street and DC cabling, it was decided that a simplified (and therefore more elegant) solution was needed. As a result each rack’s capacity will double from 432 fibres to 864 as we will now use 12 shelves for street and DC cabling. This will allow us greater flexibility and will reduce the risks to working circuits in the racks as well as the number of cables inside the racks themselves. Of course, another advantage of this solution is that it will help keep the loss on a circuit as low as possible.

After this re-design the splicing got underway with the fibre techs laying up the fibres in the first GPS tray and splicing on the pigtails, making them ready to receive the cables to customer racks as well as allowing for the OTDR testing to take place.


The first tubes are layed up into the GPS tray and cut to length.]]> http://www.pipenetworks.com/dc3/index.php?entry=entry070612-140243 PIPE Networks Tue, 12 Jun 2007 04:02:43 GMT http://www.pipenetworks.com/dc3/comments.php?y=07&m=06&entry=entry070612-140243