Milton Keynes Visit - Day 2

Ah well. All things change and I am now spending the evening in our Imperial Way Data Centre trying to safely service a Generator ACB.

The problem is that due to the safety interlock mechanism, when I extract the ACB from the main switchboard, the Mains ACB falls out too.

Our only solution is to get a spare ACB from the MK site and take it over to IW and hope that it fits.

Visit to MK Data Centre - Day 1

Sometimes it is nice just to get away from the normal surroundings and go somewhere different. I am down with my MK team today looking over the DC and checking out a few things and just having a general catch-up. Sadly though, it is impossible to escape from the day job in Edinburgh so I have been getting chased from pillar to post.


Anyone remember the days before cell phones and e-mail?


Two Krypton Factors today.


The big problem we have is with Mardix iPDU switchboards. Does anyone out there use them? I can't reconcile the independent circuit load figures with the overall load figures. This is a bit of a bugger when we use the system to bill clients.


Mardix are giving me telephone help today so will be interesting to see if this helps me understand how the boards work.


We have had a new 3rd Cold Water Chiller added to the cooling estate. It has been plumbed and commissioned into service. this work was carried out by Adcock's who do the installation and maintenance and Airedale who supplied the unit and did the controls work.


One day later we have temperature issues in the room. We know it's a controls problem so call Adcock's, the maintenance company and tell them. We ask them to send a controls enginneer at the same time.


Eventually an HVAC engineer turns up, no controls engineer, and decides that it is a controls fault.


We still do not have a working system as we are now waiting for a new controls engineer to arrive. If only they had listened in the first place.


I am now looking for a new maintenance company.

Start of the New Build

Well as I reported earlier, there are a lot of projects in the pipeline that are going to make and keep me very busy for the next year at least.

The HVAC upgrade and addition for the Imperial Way 1 centre has now reached Final Design and BAFO stage so todayvwas spent crossingbt's etc and finishing my reportbforbthe Board.

A cool quarter of a million is required so that will test their mettle.

We have also officially launched the project to build Imperial Way 2, so yesterday was spent on a flying trip down to London from Edinburgh with a good friend and fine electrical designer, Steve, to cast an eye over the existing power distribution system. We thought we may be able to tap the incoming supply and split it across two sites, but as it is a packaged substation it would not be as straightforward as we would like. Webhave come away with some thoughts and hopefully will settle on one of them. More later

Maintenance Time (originally posted on 10th August)

One of the things that I hate the most about building and managing Data Centre is the fact that all maintenance on critical infrastructure has to be carried out at ungodly hours. Ally this to the fact that Uninterruptable Power Supplies (UPS) have factory recommended component swap-outs, whether or not the component, usually capacitors are broken or not.

It is an ass covering exercise all round. If they state five years and you don’t follow the recommendations they may last ten years plus, however if one or more of them go pop (usually with catastrophic consequences) then you get the old “Well we did warn you ” routine.

Last nights exercise included replacing the DC Capacitor banks on 2 x 200kVA machines. As they are A and B devices I could only do one at a time and it takes 90 minutes each. Throw in another 45 minutes per machine to carry out routine maintenance, and multiply that by 8 and as we had to start at 21:00 it made for a long night.

Good news was that we managed to finish the tasks one hour early, maintain the client load and put everything back where it came from (hopefully)

That was August

The year is passing us by very quickly and sadly, it will soon be Christmas. Summer holiday have come and gone and time to get all the Data Centre projects under way, and finish off the little nippy bits and pieces that are hanging about making productivity look bad.

My main focus at the moment is in adding to and upgrading our HVAC installation in our Imperial Way site. The existing units are in excess of ten years old and have performed admirably, sometimes over and above the call of duty in keeping the IT systems cool.

When they were designed, the criteria was for an external ambient temperature of 29degC. Sadly, in these days of Global Warming and Climate Change this figure now appears to be incredibly low. I am now looking at a design ambient of 35degC, which was unheard of a few years ago.

The issue is now how best to swap out the units without impacting the current cooling effort. Not only can we not afford to lose anything (again) but we also need to make space to install a further two new units.

This project will become a tagged update list as it proceeds

Moving Forward

Quick update time


As reported last time the company has got bigger, and hopefully better. We now have four Data Centre locations to look after and its a challenge to say the least. I am currently managing a number of projects at the moment, one of which is to beef up security in one of my southern locations. As of today we are installing hoodie-cams and fence touch detectors along with a raft of PIR controlled spot-lights and IR cameras.


We are coming to the end of a refurbishment project in our IW Data Centre, and it looks good. Thanks to ITE Projects for their skills on this one. We did install a Meeson's anti-tailgating portal for security purposes but it's been a tad problematic, to say the least.

The main challenge at the moment is to get all the Data Centres operating to the same quality standard for SLA, maintenance and support, which means that the next few weeks, when not living in hotels and airports, is going to be spent driving thorough new processes and procedures. Challenging to say the least.

On a lighter note, it could be Sepp Blatter running the company !!!!!