Setting up a datacentre

[DuaneJackson]

I thought I'd start a thread for some "bluesky" thinking.

Datacentres. As any of you with co-located or your own servers will know, the price of datacentre space has been rocketing. What seems to be driving this, besides the 'leccy bill, is the lack of space.

So who wants to build a data centre? : )

At first I was thinking somewhere outside of London, then I thought - why not outside of the UK? As long as you have fast reliable connections into LINX and the US it shouldn't be a problem.

Also, real-estate is cheaper abroad...Croatia? Estonia? Latvia? You'd need a purpose built sub-station, and the start up costs would be atleast £10m.

Anyone wnat to have a public brainstorm about this?

 

[SuffolkDesigns]

I have thought about this before, and decided it was not worth the time, effort & money involved to even build a small DC. However, should your figures show otherwise I would be more than happy to assist

 

[Rob Holmes]

I think the biggest issue is linking into a decent backbone provider like Level 3 or something.

Currently we use a datacentre in Horsham, Sussex - staying out of the city for various reasons.

Rob

 

[UK-Networks]

Yes, can you imagine how much it would cost to dig up half the country to lay some fibre to your dc in one of these countries?

 

[Rob Holmes]

The reason I mentioned Level 3 are that they already have a worldwide fibre optic network which I would always recommend plugging directly into as it's a single carrier hop to most cities then (which speeds things up)

Location will always be dictated by connectivity possibilities in conjunction with budget

R

 

[DuaneJackson]

From speaking the the guys involved with a Level 3 datacentre we are currently in, the data connection is a relatively minor problem in comparison to the power consumption issues.

 

[DuaneJackson]

Location will always be dictated by connectivity possibilities in conjunction with budget

True, but I'd suspect the additional cost of running fibre to a cheaper location could be recouped by the lower cost of the building and the taxes.

 

[cjd]

It's a big boy's game - £10m is conservative.

But the real problem for me is that you can't run up there to stick in a new server, change out a switch etc etc. You have to rely on the Droids to do the physical stuff that can't be remotely managed. Whenever we have to use a droid they *always* fcuk something up.

We're in here

http://www.interhouse.net/

I wouldn't say their costs have increased much tho'

 

[Rob Holmes]

We're in here

http://www.interhouse.net/

I wouldn't say their costs have increased much tho'

You missed off the 'yet'

Do you have racks or are you co-lo in someone elses racks?

It's my understanding that alot of the rack owners are holding off passing on the real power costs that are coming in soon.

Duane - maybe opt for solar ?

Rob

 

[DuaneJackson]

Agreed about the droids!

We recently moved out of interhouse because of the prices going up and into the Level 3 building near Moorgate. Got stitched up because the company selling the colo space went tits up. So were back to paying almost the same as we did at Redbus.

Still, I feel safer having the servers away from Canary Wharf in the current political climate.

The other good thing that came out of it is that we are now on "portable" IP addresses from datahop, so if we move datacentres again we don't need to worry about DNS or changing any IPs.

 

[bwglaw]

Another cost will be on-site 24/365 IT support as well as adequate ventilation systems and security.

Our racks are with Boots IT

HOG are planning to set up an ISP and currently seeking a partner in this. A Data Centre would be far too costly

Jonathan

 

[Rob Holmes]

Generally you only need a few staff at a NOC on shifts - and yes raised floors, early smoke detection systems, air temperature stabilisers, humidity controls etc etc are all vital.

R

 

[Mac Yeti]

I used to have to deal with datacenters around the world and the UK ones were by far the worst, in terms of as cjd mentioned, trying to get someone on the phone to test things whilst you worked out what could have gone wrong was a nightmare, as well as connectivity issues, like level 3 falling out with cogent. They do let you go in and do your own stuff though if you like squeezing in between racks.

The best ones I dealt with were Interxion Amsterdam and Frankfurt, I can't remember anything going wrong there.

 

[cjd]

You missed off the 'yet'

I guess :-(

Do you have racks or are you co-lo in someone elses racks?

We have our own cabinets

Not sure I'd trust an Eastern Euopean power suppy either (regardless of UPS etc)

 

[SuffolkDesigns]

Not sure I'd trust an Eastern Euopean power suppy either (regardless of UPS etc)

The datacenters here in Estonia are very very smart, they have great network uptime, no noticable power outage in the past 6 years that I have been using them, and there are no bandwidth charges as it is subsidised by the government.

 

[DuaneJackson]

No bandwidth charges as it is subsidised by the government.

None at all? Are you saying I can put a server in with you and use up as much bandwidth as I like??

 

[SuffolkDesigns]

None at all? Are you saying I can put a server in with you and use up as much bandwidth as I like??

if it is in an Estonian datacenter, then yes you can. The only limit is the amount of data that your server can process

 

[Rob Holmes]

if it is in an Estonian datacenter, then yes you can. The only limit is the amount of data that your server can process

Dangerous practice as it leads to busy networks which don't make fast networks

R

 

[DuaneJackson]

Dagnabbit!

What are the connections to the rest of the world like? I get a 31ms ICMP response time from www.vshosting.co.uk, compared to 10-15ms to my UK servers, or 120ms to my US servers. It might make sense to move my US servers to Estonia early next year as my bandwidth consumption is likely to go through the roof.

Do you do leased servers yourself?

 

[SuffolkDesigns]

lol, vshosting.co.uk is actually on a UK server

try pinging microlink.ee (they are the provider I use here)

will pm you about the other question

 

[cjd]

The datacenters here in Estonia are very very smart

Western European power supplies aren't that brilliant either I guess.

The grid failure in Germany led to the biggest pan- European power collapse in at least 30 years through a domino effect that swept through Western and Eastern Europe

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=a4J9_1zeDuEo&refer=europe

 

[Rob Holmes]

any datacentre with half a brain has UPS and generators and a contract with local fuel delivery firms and a fuel storage on site as well.

Goes for the upstream providers too.

Rob

 

[cjd]

any datacentre with half a brain has UPS and generators and a contract with local fuel delivery firms and a fuel storage on site as well.

Goes for the upstream providers too.

Rob

Normally they run raw power into UPS with back-up generators. The Redbus site, where we are, has an enormous turning flywheel that switches from motor to generator if the mains power drops out. After it starts slowing down they have 2 diesel generators the size of petrol tankers. Nice pictures here - click on generators.

http://www.interhouse.net/datacentre/datacentre.htm

So, one day the UPS triggered by accident causing a power surge for less than a second - as 4 floors worth of carrier class equipment was re-booting and attempting to fail-over it tripped again for another 2 seconds. The second one caused mayhem as some server and routers refused to come back up.

Happy days.

 

[DuaneJackson]

So, one day the UPS triggered by accident causing a power surge for less than a second - as 4 floors worth of carrier class equipment was re-booting and attempting to fail-over it tripped again for another 2 seconds. The second one caused mayhem as some server and routers refused to come back up.

I remember it well! 1st March last year - or was it the year before? Anyway, 8 hours of downtime!