Tag Archive for 'power'

Gyron unveils new 8MW “Maylands” datacentre in Hemel Hempstead, UK

Published on July 25, 2011 in Maylands and Press Releases. 2 Comments Tags: density, expansion, fit out, HV, maylands, network, power, security.

July 25, 2011, Hemel Hempstead. Gyron today announced that it had commenced work to bring online an additional datacentre in Hemel Hempstead, in the South East of England. When open for customer occupation in Q1 2012, the new Maylands facility will complement the existing Centro facility, also in Hemel Hempstead, that was opened by the company in 2009.

Maylands Datacentre

Conveniently located close to the M1 and M25 motorways encircling London, the new facility is set within a secure private 170,000 sq ft compound with 66,000 sq ft of datacentre space and 22,000 sq ft of associated offices and disaster recovery areas. The site will feature dual redundant 8MW power supplies from two dedicated on-site HV substations, as well as diverse connections to multiple fibre optic connectivity providers.

State-of-the art security measures will be in place, including 24/7 on-site security staff, full digital CCTV coverage, Government certified vehicular impact protection, blast proof windows, and prison specification electrified perimeter fencing.

Gyron’s Managing Director, Robin Balen, also revealed that Gyron had already pre-signed agreements with customers for over 1MW of critical IT load. He added, “We’re delighted to announce that with our 3MW Centro facility at nearly 90% occupancy after less than two years operation, we’ve been able to bring forward our expansion plans. The new Maylands datacentre will give us capacity for up to an additional 1,200 racks to continue to support our customers’ most critical IT applications.”

Retail and wholesale colocation services will both be available at the facility, all with best-in-class resiliency and energy efficiency. The Maylands datacentre has been master planned to support 6 individual data suites, each with the capacity to host 1MW of customer IT load and supporting rack densities of up to 28kW and a PUE of between 1.2 and 1.3 with full 2N power resiliency.

Ben Miller, Operations Director, continued, “Like our Centro facility, we are aiming to source all of the energy requirements for the Maylands datacentre from 100% green renewable sources. We will also be extending our existing ISO 14001 accreditation to cover the new facility, and will be implementing the best practices recommended by The Green Grid and the EU Code of Conduct for Datacentres.”

For further details on the Maylands datacentre facility, please contact the Gyron sales team.

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Notes for editors

About Gyron

Founded in March 2000 and privately owned, Gyron provides highly resilient and energy-efficient datacentre services, supporting business critical IT applications for customers across the world. The company offers colocation on both a wholesale and retail basis, along with associated connectivity and management services, all supported by comprehensive 100% availability Service Level Guarantees.

Centro Suite 1 Phase 2 fit-out update

Published on May 11, 2010 in Centro fit-out and Pictures. 0 Comments Tags: batteries, caging, centro, chiller, cooling, crac, deliveries, expansion, fit out, power, UPS.

Followers of our Twitter feed have been enjoying some behind the scenes photos from the expansion works at our Centro facility. We’ve put together a quick post here with some highlights:

: Bases ready for installation of additional 5 air conditioning units

: Installation of new ultra-secure dedicated caged area

: Additional 250kW Carrier chiller arrives on-site

: Delivery of new 2,500L chiller water buffer tank

: Delivery of UPS batteries to support 400kW at 2N redundancy

: UPS battery build nearing completion

Centro generator snow start test

Published on December 18, 2009 in General Bloggery and Videos. 0 Comments Tags: centro, generators, power, ppm, snow, testing.

As part of our extensive Planned Preventative Maintenance (PPM) schedule at our Centro datacentre facility, we run start tests on our generators every two weeks.

These generators provide stand-by power in the unlikely event of a utility outage on both HV supplies to the datacentre. We store enough diesel on-site to run the entire facility for around 4 days, and we have fuel resupply agreements with multiple fuel providers to ensure we can continue operating from generator power even in case of a prolonged outage.

We posted an image of the snow that had settled at Centro over on our Twitter page (over a foot deep in most places!), but as a generator start test was scheduled for today, we’ve uploaded the CCTV footage as an extra bonus:

Our generators are constantly heated and their starter batteries kept fully charged to ensure they are available as quickly as possible to provide backup power to our facility.

During this start test, the outside temperature was around -1C, and both generators started, synced and closed their breakers on to our main switchgear in 18 seconds, well within normal operating tolerances (we have battery supplies for our UPS system to last around 10 minutes before the generators kick in). The generators are run for around 30 minutes, during which time the on-board management computers are checked to ensure that there are no faults.

Centro Cooling efficiency

Published on August 28, 2009 in General Bloggery and Green Tech. 3 Comments Tags: air conditioning, centro, efficiency, green grid, power, PuE.

Early on in the design stage for our new Centro datacentre, we recognised the importance of in depth monitoring, reporting and trending capabilities across the entire facility, both for troubleshooting and early warning purposes, and for analysing efficiency data.

As such, the facility is equipped with an extensive Building Management System (BMS), which tracks around 2,000 variables in real time, including the status of the fire protection equipment (zoned detectors, VESDA, and FM200), leak detection system, cooling plant (CRACs, chillers, pumps/inverters), and power infrastructure (branch circuit metering, as well as meters on every outgoing way on main and distribution electrical switchgear, UPS plant and generators).

This level of monitoring has recently had even greater importance attached to it given the upcoming requirements for cap and trade carbon taxes, allowing us to collect data on energy usage (kWh, kW, power factor, voltage, and current) on a per-rack basis, and report this to our customers.

Our Centro datacentre facility has been up and running for nearly 3 months now, so we thought it would be worthwhile doing some analysis on the efficiency of our cooling equipment. We have installed highly efficient Computer Room Air Conditioning (CRAC) units, with electrically commutated (EC) fans, and have also used high efficiency over-sized inverter driven pumps, and high efficiency external packaged chillers with a higher than usual return water temperature, so we were hoping for promising figures.

We’re pleased to announce that our initial analysis shows a PuE figure of 1.63! We are especially happy with this as our current situation with a large number of customers still populating their racks presents several big issues with part-load efficiencies on key plant equipment, particularly UPSs and Chillers.

The Green Grid specify:

Some preliminary work indicates that many datacenters may have a PUE of 3.0 or greater, but with proper design a PUE value of 1.6 should be achievable

We are continuing to improve the systems and processes in place at the Centro facility and hope to make even greater efficiency savings with additional investment in plant in the coming months.