While things in Seattle return to normal, work to decommission the Bothell datacenter continued this past week. In November of last year we put all of our datacenter infrastructure (Generator, UPS, electrical transformers, ATS, etc) up for sale on eBay, believing that it would require many months to sell. It actually sold within hours of our initial posting. The Internet is indeed a great equalizer and excellent commerce conduit! An east coast buyer agreed to acquire all that we could not use at our new facility, and we arranged for them to pick the equipment up and ship it to their location. All parties were satisfied - The buyer got an excellent deal and we were able to not worry about disposal.

It was sad to see our big green backup generator go... it had saved us many times and had been a very dependable part of digital.forest's infrastructure. However, we have an amazing generator at our new facility which we will present in a future posting.

The decommissioning work went quite well, with minimal hassle, but maximum effort from all involved. Big thanks to Damian Amrhein, recently promoted to Facilities Manager, and our excellent contractors: ECS Inc., Ballard Transfer, and Team Mechanical.

The process began with a general shutdown of all electricity to the facility. We performed this work after hours to prevent any possible power interruption to the rest of the building. Thankfully no such interruption was required, and we proceeded to remove the wiring and electrical panels. Before the general shutdown, Damian fulfilled a several-year-long desire and pushed the "big red button" (the EPO) which performed as designed and shut down the electrical in the datacenter.

Above: Heavy gauge copper wires on the floor after their removal from between the UPS and the breaker panels.

While the contractors worked on the electrical, d.f staff went to work removing the network and racking infrastructure.

Above: A few miles and a few hundred pounds of twisted pair.

After having been in our new facility for a while, the old one seems small. It is a wonder we were able to squeeze all those servers into this space! As the racks and other infrastructure came down it lost the cramped feel, but still felt quite small. Of course we also are now able to open the blinds and let sunlight in... something we never did in all the years we occupied the space - a refreshing change!

Above: Sunshine in Server Room Two. Electrical Contractors have removed the breaker panels.

Above: Sunshine in Server Room One. The racks here are about to be removed. We'll be selling them soon probably for about $30 a rack, if any clients are interested contact us.

Above: digital.forest Facilities Manager Damian Amrhein poses above vanquished racks, as he pauses between unbolting the seismic supports.

Above: The view from behind the OC-12 fiber termination and the UPS of the almost empty facility.

Above: Racks, removed and lined up. Plus some ladder rack (for overhead wiring) and our lone concession to the ".com era" excess, one of our 80's Vintage video games.

Above: The riggers from Ballard Transfer remove one of the two electrical transformers. The empty UPS battery cabinet sits in the foreground.

One of the benefits of our new facility in Seattle is that the potentially dangerous parts of the electrical infrastructure are physically removed from the datacenter. For example, the UPS is isolated in its own room, and the transformers are outside the building. While we never had any issues with our transformers over the years, we do know of other datacenter operators that have experienced some. Just one more thing that makes our new facility so nice.

Next: Removing the Generator.