As previously promised, here is a support blog post about the backup generator at our new facility at Intergate.West. It is a unit dedicated solely to our datacenter, and securely housed in purpose-built rooms in the lower level of our building.

Above: It is big. It is loud. It is ours.

The generator pictured above is a 16 Cylinder, twin turbo, Cummins Diesel engine fitted with an Onan generator capable of producing 1.25 MegaWatts of electricity. At the far end is a 700Kw load bank. Since our datacenter consumes a fraction of what this machine can produce we must add some load to the genset when it runs to allow it to operate efficiently.

You can watch a movie of it being turned on here. It is VERY loud, which isn't conveyed by the video. It also creates a fair amount of wind, which is apparent. The whole room is vented with large fans which come on when the generator operates.

Above: Yes, it is loud.

Above: Facilities Manager Damian Amrhein operates the load bank.

We have a fully stocked 5000 gallon fuel tank. We'll be running a full load test soon to get an exact figure on our run rate, but we assume that should last us between 75 and 120 hours, perhaps more. We are located, as we were in Bothell, in a datacenter-rich environment (our neighbors are two Microsoft.com/MSN/Hotmail Datacenters, Washington Mutual Bank's Datacenter, and several fiber carrier switches.) all of which are equipped with backup generators. Should any large environmental issue, such as a storm, cause a regional power outage, the facilities here will be getting regular fuel supplies from local vendors. We have been a long-time customer of Nelson Petroleum, who can be here with 5000 gallons of fuel within a few hours. Our standard protocol has been to call Nelson at the start of any power issue that starts our backup generator.

A nice feature of this backup power system that we did not have at our old facility in Bothell is a bus tie system. This is a panel on the outside wall of the generator room that allows us to attach another generator in series with the existing system. This provides N+1 redundancy, as we can bring in a truck-trailer mounted generator unit and attach it to our power infrastructure. Should the existing genset require an overhaul or extended maintenance, we can have a second unit there to continue to provide backup power.

We test run the genset at least once every month, to keep it in good running condition. We will also test it and the transfer switch system on full load at least twice a year. Advanced notice of which will be posted here on our support blog.