The UPS had new batteries installed last week. This UPS has two complete battery cabinets - they can operate as a single unit, or independently. This allows us to have more capacity of course, but also provides battery backup power while we perform maintenance on either cabinet. For example when we do our annual preventative maintenance we can shut down one battery string for testing, while still having the other available. It is unlikely that we would experience a power failure during our annual maintenance - but at least we would be fully protected in that occurrence. This should also add a layer of redundancy that should prevent issues like we experienced a few months ago where a power event caused a battery string to fail momentarily. Just one of many things we have learned and are applying to improve our service and facility as we grow.

Above: Battery Technicians at work turning up our new UPS.

In other power-related news: Just prior to the UPS turnup we activated mains utility power out to the MGE PDUs (Power Distribution Units). These act as both circuit breakers and "intelligent routers" of AC power out to our racks. We have two of these units and they will serve the two sections of our datacenter. One (the near unit in the below photo) will cover the hosting and single-server colocation section. The other (the far unit in the below photo) will be dedicated to the rackspace colocation section. This is where our half-rack, full-rack, and locked cabinet colocation clients' equipment will be located.

Above: MGE PDUs, (the white boxes in the middle-ground) lit up for the first time.

Sharp eyed viewers will note the DC power distribution equipment in the foreground on the left. There is also a Lucent DC PDU in the far background. While we have no plans to immediately turn these up, there is infrastructure to support 48 VDC in the new facility. If a large client requires DC power, we could make arrangements to supply it.

We are on-track for our first servers moving in mid-late January. The next update should include racks and wiring, with fiber optics close behind. Stay tuned!