Our new Fiber Optic installation was terminated this afternoon. The contractor will be back tonight around 11 pm to test the circuit. We hope to have this circuit up and running by the end of the week.
In other connectivity news, we have a new Gigabit Ethernet connection arriving soon for a BGP session with another major provider. It was originally scheduled for January, but has been delayed by fiber and power issues at another location. That circuit may also be up and running by the end of this week. We'll share more details about that as the turn-up approaches.
We have a contractor here today pulling a new fiber optic connection into the building and our datacenter. Initially we'll be using this new fiber for a dedicated connection to the Westin Building in downtown Seattle. Over this connection we'll connect our network to the Seattle Internet eXchange aka "The SIX"... we were SIX members when we were located in Bothell and are looking forward to the peering opportunities there again now that we've settled into our new facility in Seattle. More importantly however, this circuit will allow relatively inexpensive direct cross-connects for our valued clients who are seeking low-to-moderate bandwidth (10mb-300mb) at the Westin. Acquiring high-bandwidth (1Gb+) at our location is very cost effective, but the backhaul and loop costs can be prohibitive for smaller scale purchases. We're seeking to remedy that via this installation and provide our clients with more and better choices for direct connectivity.
Installing the fiber meant running a new 24-strand bundle from the vault out in front of our building up to the network core in our datacenter six floors above. The contractors arrived and found the vaults with a bit of water in them, not surprising due to our rainy climate. They ran a pump and removed the water so as to make working in the vaults less... wet. The water was pumped out onto the parking lot, where it ran down into a nearby storm drain.
Above: Looking down into one of the two fiber vaults in front of the building. Just a bit of water down there. The vaults are designed in such a way to keep the fiber conduits above the level of pooled water, but even so, the fiber itself is well-protected. Each strand is insulated and the whole bundle is encased in a weatherproof jacket seal, and then the bundles are run through plastic "innerduct".
Above: A view of the work from a balcony on our floor. The grassy area and shoulder of Tukwila International Blvd (SR 99) at the top of the frame is where virtually all the fiber optics that run southbound out of the Seattle metropolitan area located. This is the principal reason why the Intergate.Seattle datacenter campus was built here.
Above: Kevin from digital.forest holds the ladder while Kevin from the cable contractor opens up the fiber junction box at the top of the conduit run from the vault six floors below.
Above: Preparing to run the innerduct.
Above: Cable Installer pulling the innerduct through to the network core. He is standing up on our ladder racking, which is about eight feet (2.5m) above the floor. All our previous fiber optic cable installations are on the left. If it comes from outside the building it arrives wrapped in innerduct. If it comes from within the building it is inside a simple jacket. We have some multi-pair bundles, as well as a few single-pair runs to other parts of the datacenter (usually for storage area networks.) All of our connectivity from the core out to the datacenter for IP networking is on the right hand side. Don't worry, no cables are ever stepped on, and we rarely climb up on the racking.
Above: A view down to the parking lot where the first pull from ground level is going up.
Above: The fiber bundle has arrived at the junction box (you can see the cable pulling harness hanging out of the innerduct to the left of the installer. He is on a radio to the installer at the other end of each innerduct. They pulled the full length of slack to here next, then made the final pull to the network core.
Above: Starting the last pull. They use cloth tape, which is pre-installed inside the innerduct to pull the cable itself though.
Once the pull is complete they leave large slack loops at either end. On Monday another team will come and terminate the fiber into a panel here in the datacenter, and splice the other end down in the vault. You can see three Fiber Termination Panels just to the left of the installer's head. Another one of these will appear Monday.
The final step was tying down the innerduct to the ladder rack and labeling the install...
We're proud to announce that our new UPS is installed and online. As I've said before it is an MGE EPS 7000 unit rated for 300-500 kVA. Our electrical contractors VECA Electric completed their job yesterday morning and a representative from MGE spent the afternoon yesterday performing the unit's turn-up. Everything went very well.
We captured the installation process in a time lapse movie:
As you can see it is a lot of work, over several days. Our guys know what they are doing though and the turn-up went well.
This is a premium bit of equipment with some very nice features. The most important of which is the capability to scale upwards in capacity as we grow. It also has a nice touch-screen LCD panel on the front that provides us with a lot of detail about what is going on inside:
Above: The user interface of our new UPS. The bottom image is a composite of three sample status screens.
We also purchased a pair of battery cabinets for the new UPS. Combined they provide 14 minutes of battery time at full load. Mind you our backup generator automatically starts up in 7-to-10 seconds if the grid power fails, but having that extra buffer is a good thing.
Above: The battery cabinets. The bottom image shows some of the batteries themselves through the open doors.
Now we turn our attention to the work in Datacenter Three. Stay tuned for more exciting news!
--Chuck Goolsbee
V.P. Technical Operations
digital.forest, Inc.
posted by Chuck G. at 06:45 PM on Wednesday, March 19, 2008 Categories:Datacenter Expansion
Above: Ness Crane arrives to lift our battery cabinets.
As previously noted, yesterday was a fully packed day of activity here at digital.forest. The crane was here again, this time to lift our new UPS' battery cabinets into the datacenter. Additionally our electrical contractors, VECA were here to pull the electrical wire runs for the new UPS and its sub-panel in Datacenter Three.
Thankfully it was a beautiful day, unlike the drizzle earlier in the week...
Above: The view south towards Mt. Rainier from the roof. On the right are our HVAC units 2 & 3.
We captured the crane lifting one of the battery cabinets on video:
That is about 10 minutes of footage compressed down to 2 minutes and 35 seconds. The crane operator was very smooth and carefully slow, so if we'd present the video scaled in real-time it would be pretty dull to watch.
Above: The second battery cabinet arrives.
Above: Tim Beyer and Shawn Hammer check out the batteries
Above: Both cabinets safe and sound inside the UPS room, waiting to be moved to their final locations.
Congrats to our Facility Manager Kevin Teker for successfully landing another big shipment with the help of Ness Crane.
Meanwhile, as the preparations for the crane work were underway, the boys from VECA Electric were over in Datacenter Three making preparations to pull cable. The cable itself is very impressive, being a bit over an inch thick. As we noted yesterday each spool is custom wound with custom made cable cut to fit our facility. Four spools in all, two for the run from the UPS room to Datacenter Three, then two from our main electrical panel to the UPS room, one main feed, and another bypass feed. The latter allows us to continue to power the facility should we need to turn the UPS off, such as for maintenance. (If any of you follow the price of commodities such as copper, you know that this is a phenomenally expensive bit of work - let's just say you could trade a few feet of this cable for a tankful of gasoline. I joked with the electricians as they trimmed a few inches off that they could buy me lunch with what was lying on the floor.)
These cable spools weigh many thousands of pounds and pulling this cable through conduit is not as easy as giving it a tug. VECA brought a special cable pulling machine, which they bolted to the floor of the UPS room in front of the UPS itself.
Above: The cable puller, bolted to the floor. The rope has been fished through the conduit from the other end of the building. At the far end they strip the cables and bolt them onto the end loop of the rope, then use the puller to s l o w l y drag the cables off the spools and through the conduit.
Once things got moving it looked like this at the UPS room end of things:
...and this at the far end in Datacenter Three:
VECA was successful in pulling one set of cables before the crane arrived for the battery cabinet delivery. Pulling continued through today and will hopefully finish up tomorrow. More updates coming soon, so stay tuned.
Yesterday was a busy day here at digital.forest. In preparation for the turn up of our new UPS our electricians rolled in several custom-prepared spools of heavy gauge copper wire. Each of these spools weigh just over 3000 lbs (1400 kg). They've been placed in various locations required to complete the cable pulls, which are happening later today.
Also happening today is the arrival of our new UPS' battery cabinets, along with a crane to lift them into the datacenter. To say things are a bit busy around here at the moment is an understatement! I'm doing my best to capture the process and we'll post images later.
--Chuck Goolsbee
VP Technical Operations
posted by Chuck G. at 01:59 PM on Wednesday, March 5, 2008 Categories:Datacenter Expansion
Our brand spanking new MGE EPS 7000 UPS arrived this morning. As I explained last summer we crane our UPS equipment through the roof of the building due to the weight of the units. It is just the safest, easiest, and quickest way. So in the wee hours of the morning we cordoned off a section of the upper parking lot for the crane and prepared the units to be lifted.
The UPS arrived packaged in two pieces, and thankfully well wrapped in plastic since light rain was in the forecast. We removed the units from the delivery truck with a forklift and lined them up for the crane to pick.
Top: Ready for the pick. Middle: Facilities Manager Kevin Teker rigging it up. Bottom: Kevin guides the UPS into the roof opening.
The whole operation went very smoothly, without incident other than everyone getting a little wet. The new unit is in the UPS room resting on Hilman rollers waiting for our electricians to install it. The delivery of the battery cabinets will be a little later this month.
Above: Our new UPS arrives safe and sound.
This new UPS has over 30% more capacity than our existing units, and has the capability to increase its capacity through an upgrade and the addition of more battery cabinets. With this unit operational we'll be able to more than double our protected power output as we grow. Stay tuned for more information as we continue to expand our datacenter.
Regards,
--Chuck Goolsbee
VP Technical Operations
posted by Chuck G. at 11:56 AM on Monday, March 3, 2008 Categories:Datacenter Expansion
Time for an update on our ongoing datacenter expansion project.
The new area is called "Datacenter Three" and is adjacent to our previous expansion, creatively named "Datacenter Two". It shares many attributes from the previous expansion, such as a common overhead cold air plenum, and a static-free, non-raised floor environment. We much prefer solid floors to raised, as they provide a far more ideal environment for today's high-density server installations. We are innovating in other ways for this expansion which will be revealed as we grow, for now though our work is fairly basic:
Here you see our electricians have begun with the power delivery for Datacenter Three. On the wall is the new main panel which is connected to the UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) room at the other end of the building. On the pallet-jack is the panel itself, being readied for installation. The innovation comes with our chosen method of power distribution from this new panel, stay tuned for more details on that.
Here is the northern half of our UPS room, being readied for the new UPS which is arriving soon. The technician shown here is relocating the FM200 clean agent fire suppression system to make room for the new battery cabinets. Our new UPS should be arriving shortly and has the capability of more than doubling our deliverable power to the datacenter. Unlike older UPS technologies this system is flexible in the amount of power it can deliver. When it arrives it will be configured for 300kVA. Later as we grow we can add capacity to it with additional batteries and software to raise it up to 500kVA.
Just like last time we'll be bringing the new UPS in via the roof and we'll document the process here on the support blog. Stay tuned for that, and other interesting updates from our expanding facility.
No, that is not Rodin's Thinker it is our fiber optic testing contractor running a certification check of the new fiber circuit we created for a customer yesterday. Clients of digital.forest not only benefit from our well-managed BGP-meshed network, they can also choose to directly connect to bandwidth providers here in the building, and in the Intergate.Seattle datacenter campus. In the business this is what is called being "carrier-neutral", so unlike for example an AT&T facility who only provides AT&T bandwidth, digital.forest clients have choice.
In this case our customer bought a small circuit from InterNAP, who has a network point of presence across the campus from us. We provided the connection to the campus fiber network and did end-to-end testing of the circuit after it was complete.
Very soon we will be formally announcing our own point of presence at The Westin Building in downtown Seattle. This will allow our customers to provision low cost dedicated circuits between their equipment at digital.forest and the myriad of providers found at the Westin. Contact your digital.forest sales or account manager today, or watch our support blog for more information.
Tonight we installed two new 16-port fiber optic cards in our network core. One of the two is pictured above - it is the one with the empty ports slotted between the 8-port fiber card above and the 48-port copper card in the middle. We've seen a sharp increase in clients requesting a fiber connection to our network, as well as more sophisticated connectivity such as a BGP routing with our AS combined with fail over protocols such as HSRP. Additionally we are part of the way through a project to seriously upgrade and expand our network; better external connectivity, and more connectivity options for our clients. These cards are a small, but important part of that project. We'll have more news and some exciting announcements in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!
That was our datacenter expansion space in late 2006 after we'd put in the walls and floor, HVAC plenum & ducts, fire suppression systems and whatnot. You can see the PDU at the far end. Not long after this photo was taken our first client moved in.
Well, here is another photo taken today, from the exact same spot:
Datacenter Two here at digital.forest is complete, and fully occupied. Our most recent caged space client moved in over the holidays.
Never resting however, we're continuing to expand. Seeing DC2 fill up we began planning and preparing our next datacenter space: Datacenter Three. In the coming months we'll have more news but here is a small preview: A new UPS is on its way, DC3 looks pretty much exactly like the image of the "before" DC2 you see above... floor is laid, HVAC plenum installed, and ready to finish. Here is a sneak peek... These photographs are taken from opposite corners of the DC looking in. The top image is looking south, towards DC2. The bottom image is looking north (towards what will be DC4). As you can see we've been using the shell of Datacenter Three as a staging area for server cabinets for DC1 & DC2. We'll be delivering power and cooling to this room soon, and will have it open for business before the time the flowers start blooming outside in the garden.
We also have some "remodeling" we're doing in DC1. Stay tuned for more news about our continuing expansion!
On Wednesday, December 19th we will be performing some maintenance on our UPS system. While this maintenance is being performed we will put the UPS system and grid power in bypass and operate the datacenter on generator power. This is standard procedure for work such as this. While we do not expect any change in power delivery, any time power is switched from one source to another, a risk of interruption is possible. Every effort and precaution will be taken to minimize this risk.
We will also be turning up an additional 100kVA PDU in Datacenter 2 to facilitate growth in that area.
Thank You,
--Chuck Goolsbee
VP, Technical Operations
digital.forest, Inc.
I'm very happy to announce that the cooling phase of our current datacenter expansion is now complete. The two new Aaon 70 ton Air Handlers have been installed, and started up successfully. This is the largest project we've taken on since our move to the Seattle datacenter in 2005, and like that project this one finished on time, and with no major headaches or heartbreaks. Plenty of hard work, but everything went very well. The weather caused us some delays, however today was clear (though a bit cold to be having a party on the roof!)
We gathered on the roof to celebrate:
Above L-R: John Ford (Sabey), Connie Bradley (d.f), Shawn Hammer (d.f), Lee Pallat (d.f), Larry Harbison (MacDonald-Miller), Steve Flink (MacDonald-Miller), Andre Bearfield (d.f), Spike Graham (d.f), Tim Beyer (d.f), Paul Sampson (d.f), Rick Russell (d.f).
And of course launch our new machines in style:
Taking a bottle of champagne in hand, digital.forest CEO Kris Bourne on the southern HVAC system, and Connie Bradley from our Billing Department on the northern unit, we listened to Facilities Manager Kevin Teker give a toast and christened the units with their new names "Rainier" & "Baker" (named after the ice-covered mountains on either horizon) ... and the ladies let the bottles fly!
We then enjoyed champagne and some smoked salmon, basking in the hum of the running machines.
Huge thanks go out to our primary contractor, MacDonald-Miller for a job well done! Sub-contractors involved were VECA Electric, ATS Controls, Ness Crane, Aaon, & Centimark Roofing. Here at digital.forest my hat goes off to Shawn Hammer and Kevin Teker, who planned, budgeted, contracted and managed this project start to finish... all while carrying out day to day operations of our facility. Great job guys!
In the coming weeks we'll be massaging the controls to get the air balanced and the multiple systems all working together in perfect harmony. We also need to finish the hot-air return/recover ducting in DC2. The next phase of the expansion is beginning work on DC3. Stay tuned for more information about that.
Above: Always mindful of every detail about the facility, Kevin sweeps up after the celebration.
posted by Chuck G. at 08:39 PM on Tuesday, November 13, 2007 Categories:Datacenter Expansion
Finally. After weeks of snapping off images at intervals ranging from 1 to 15 minutes the digital.forest ConstructionCam has produced the final product. Enjoy the two weeks condensed into 4 minutes. We'll put a link to a high-res version on one of our streaming servers soon.
Quite a bit of work remains, and in fact our contractors are up on the roof right now. As stated yesterday we're planning for a turn up of these units early next week. We'll post more info as it becomes available.
Our primary contractor MacDonald-Miller has done an excellent job, thanks guys!
posted by Chuck G. at 02:46 AM on Wednesday, November 7, 2007 Categories:Datacenter Expansion
As we announced earlier, our new steel frames, and two HVAC units arrived today. It was a big event. I know our loyal clients expect me to provide them with timely and complete updates of our construction progress, but today I was late, sorry! The Puget Sound area was covered in thick fog, and despite a pre-dawn start to get here traffic delayed me and I arrived as the second steel frame was being craned up over the edge of the roof. I snapped this shot literally as I parked my car:
Running up to the roof with my MacDonald-Miller supplied hard hat on this is the scene I found:
Both steel frames already in place and workers from MacDonald-Miller installing the duct work between the openings created last week and the frames.
Top image above: A view down into the datacenter (sealed with plastic during the install!) via the hot air return duct.
Bottom image above: Kevin Teker inspects the steel frame before the HVAC units arrive.
Within an hour the HVAC units arrived on a flatbed truck. The rest you see captured on the video above. Craning the units up onto the roof and placing them on the steel frames. The crane itself was a very impressive unit, and the crew from Ness Crane were very professional and did an outstanding job swiftly, and accurately.
The steel frames fit perfectly onto the supports installed last week, and the HVAC units fit perfectly on the steel frames. Today was the first time these two components met, but since they were designed to go together, everything fit perfectly. The tolerances achieved were amazing, everything fit to within 1/64th of an inch. (That's 0.396875 millimeters... which accordion to my calculations is.... amazingly small!) We have to hand it to the guys at MacDonald-Miller, they did an fantastic job of design and fabrication. Today it all came together after months of planning and work. Good job guys!
Above: A nice view at the business end of the HVAC unit. On the left side is the cold air supply outlet, and on the right is the hot air return intake. These mated up to the ducts placed in the roof last week, after the unit was spun around in mid-air of course.
Above: Checking the fit and placement of the unit before it is lowered the final amount. Watching this huge unit being gingerly placed by a gigantic crane was very interesting to watch.
Afterwards the units were welded into place. Welding will continue tomorrow. The electricians will be here later in the week to run power to the units. Turn-up is scheduled for Tuesday, November 13th. Ironically snow is forecast for Wednesday, November 14th. This project began in the planning stages last Spring, and I always joked that we'd have our new air-conditioning units installed "just in time for Winter." Funny how it all works out.
Stay tuned for updates as work progresses.
(and YES, constructioncam will be updated tonight!)
All of us here at digital.forest are happy to announce the arrival of our newest family members, twin HVAC units. They arrived by crane (a member of the stork family) at 9:55 and 10:15 am today, both weighing in at 70 tons apiece. We're not sure of their gender, and haven't come up with any names for them yet, but we're all very proud and happy that the delivery went well. No complications and they have all their parts intact.
Above: The new arrivals, resting in their cradles after delivery.
The delivery crew are all enjoying coffee and cinnamon rolls as we speak and are in good spirits. More photos and videos will be posted soon!
Above: The proud parent, digital.forest Facilities Manager Kevin Teker (in red hard hat, center) flanked by the delivery crew. The MacDonald-Miller guys on the left, and Ness Crane crew on the right . L-R: Jared Sheeks, Steve Flink, Justin Skinner, Larry Harbison, Larry Mayrand, all from MacDonald-Miller. Kevin Teker, digital.forest. From Ness Crane: Bobby Aynes, Jim Burnett, & Mark Crawford. Not pictured from Mac-Miller, but involved in the pick: Mike Klein, Andy Burlingham, and Steve Harbison.
posted by Chuck G. at 03:53 AM on Tuesday, November 6, 2007 Categories:Datacenter Expansion
Tomorrow is the big day. Steel frames and HVAC units arrive, and will be craned up onto the roof. Client access to DC2 will have to be restricted during times the crane is operational, which will be from just after dawn until around noon. We will update the support blog as work progresses.
posted by Chuck G. at 03:17 AM on Monday, November 5, 2007 Categories:Datacenter Expansion
As of yesterday afternoon the roof penetration phase of the construction project is complete. The weather cooperated and after a foggy morning we enjoyed clear skies. The roofers were able to seal up and weatherproof the project. The next phase is completely independent of weather, so we can proceed at a pace dictated by ourselves and our contractors, not the national weeather service.
Today (another sunny day in Seattle, we're enjoying them while they last!) the electricians are on the roof preparing the circuits for the HVAC units which are scheduled to arrive early next week. On Tuesday the crane will arrive to install the steel superstructure to support the units, which will be welded onto the support columns installed this week. As soon as the steel frames are ready the two new HVAC units will be lifted up and placed on the roof. Our primary contractor for the project sent us this photo of the steel structure today:
Constructioncam is offline for this lull in rooftop action. Expect an update to the timelapse next week.
To bring you up to date, here are some photos of the project after our rain ceased and work continued:
A single penetration remained after the rain stopped, a return duct in what we call "datacenter two". This is the room we completed and opened exactly one year ago today. Since that time we have sold cage space to five new clients so only about 500sq' of floor space remaining. The final penetration is coincidentally located above this empty space.
The metal workers had two electrical conduits to work around but did so skillfully and without drama or delay. These guys know what they are doing. You can see above the beginnings of the penetration and the conduits they avoided. In the background of the photo is the cold air supply plenum and a stub duct we have in place.
Above: Two views as the hole is completed, the last one showing the work in context of the datacenter two room.
As I indicated in previous postings about roof penetrations we do our best to mitigate or eliminate any risk to the datacenter and its equipment below during this sort of work. We increase supply fan output to positively pressurize the room. This means that fine particles are forced out and upward. Heavy debris such as metal shavings fall straight down and onto a drop cloth we place under the work area with more coverage than required. Our Facilities Manager is everywhere at once, supervising work, ensuring that everything is just right, even operating the shop-vac to make sure as much debris is caught at the source as possible. He also made sure that each penetration was completed within 30 minutes, from first cut to capped. This meant that temperatures in the datacenter remained stable throughout the process. Thankfully outside temperature and humidity were ideal and made managing the inside temps easy.
The final steps involved inserting the curb, duct and capping it:
The roofers then sealed up all the penetrations and the rest of the day was spent cleaning up and getting all the tools and supplies ready for the crane to come and lift them off the roof this morning.
Above: Removed materials collected and ready to go. You can see the chunk of concrete we installed studs into, then later sawed off the slab at the direction of the building engineer. If you look back at the constructioncam time-lapse this was the work carried out under lights in the pre-dawn weekend darkness.
We're going to enjoy the lull in the project to pick up some other datacenter projects that have been on the back-burner while this HVAC install has been monopolizing our attention. Early next week though we're back to full-throttle with a projected HVAC startup date sometime in mid-November. Stay tuned for updates.
Chuck Goolsbee
VP Tech Ops
digital.forest, Inc
posted by Chuck G. at 04:24 AM on Wednesday, October 31, 2007 Categories:Datacenter Expansion
The time has come to reveal the "special feature" we mentioned earlier... here it is:
Constructioncam!
We've mounted a weatherproofed Apple Mac Mini computer up on our roof, and networked it to our datacenter below. It is running a timelapse software application and tracking the progress of our HVAC construction project. The above is October 24 through October 27... in under 2 minutes.
We'll update the timelapse and the site as work progresses.
posted by Chuck G. at 06:25 AM on Monday, October 29, 2007 Categories:Datacenter Expansion
Thanks to the magic of the Internet Protocol, we have a NOC equipped with Doppler Radar:
That photo is right from one of the big plasma screens in our Network Operations Center. It clearly shows the rain squall tracking towards our roof construction, so we inform the crews up there that it is coming. They cover up the in-progress work with tarps and erect their tent over the one they are working on.
During the above conference the roofers vote to keep going, while the metal workers decide to grab lunch, since they have to wait for the rain to stop. Three holes down, one to go, as soon as this squall goes somewhere else.
posted by Chuck G. at 06:12 AM on Monday, October 29, 2007 Categories:Datacenter Expansion
Of course, as soon as I posted that our break in the weather had arrived, it rained. Thankfully at the start of the project it did not matter too much as it was just a day of hoisting materials up onto the roof and preparing for the next day.
True to the forecast, the next day was clear, bright, and dry. We got to work!
Above is a shot of the supply/return ducts with the Seattle skyline in the background. Work proceeds at a quick pace, with two teams on the roof working away. One team from Centimark Roofing preparing holes in the roof, followed by a team of metal workers from MacDonald-Miller who install the steel column supports on the top of the building's vertical structural members. The roofers then come back to the holes and re-roof around the newly installed support.
Above: A metal worker up to his elbows in roofing while he bolts a column support to the building. You can see a full column support off to the right.
Here is what the column supports looked like when compete:
Several of these were installed over last week, with the final one going in before dawn on Saturday morning. We uncovered an unexpected concrete slab. It was not on any of the building's as-built drawings and was as much a surprise to the building's engineer as it was to us. At first the engineer said we could rest the column support on top of it, but then he changed his mind and decided we should cut a portion of it off. (this is the same engineer who admitted to not planning for installing or removing UPS equipment in our UPS room!) To spare the rest of the building's tenants from the noise of the concrete saw, we did the work in the pre-dawn darkness on Saturday.
The weather is looking "iffy" today but we're rolling forward as fast as we can. Parallel sets of rain squalls are tracking north and south of us as we carry on with roof penetrations. (The rest of the week's forecast is much better though.)
The next job is the large opening for air supply and return. These are huge rectangular openings for the HVAC units to pull hot air out of the datacenter, and push cold air into our supply plenum. The supply plenum is basically a huge box suspended from the ceiling which traverses the length of the datacenter. Supply ducts branch off from the plenum to bring cold air to the racks. We initially place duct stubs along the plenum, then custom-build duct work to suit the rack installations that clients bring in. Unlike the build-a-big-empty-room approach of our competitors, we deliver custom ducting to suit our clients' particular designs. This is one of the reasons we can support much higher electrical densities than just about every other colocation facility in the Pacific Northwest. In addition to supply ducts we will also be installing custom hot air return ducting as well. These will go back to the main hot air return below the individual HVAC units.
Below is a sequence of photos showing the penetration of the roof and installation of the main supply duct. The subsequent supply and return installations are identical.
Step one is removing the roof material, which I did not photograph, sorry. Step two is cutting through the pan deck roof below it.
Cuts with the grain of the pan deck corrugations are done with a metal knife, which is quiet.
The pan deck comes out in sections.
The cuts against the grain have to be done with a sawzall, which is quite noisy.
Adhesive and insulation foam are placed around the exposed pan deck shelf to seal and hold the curb duct in place.
The curb duct is placed...
...then leveled, squared, and aligned properly.
Meanwhile the roofers are preparing the next hole through the roofing material.
Inspecting the quality of the seal before capping.
Capped and complete!
The roofers return and seal up the whole penetration to weatherproof and insulate it.
Here is what one of the hot air return penetrations looks like from inside the datacenter:
All this has to happen in a very short time as any penetration drops our air pressure in the datacenter and could have an impact on our cooling efficiency. Our Facilities Manager is closely supervising the procedures to ensure swift completion. We are also closely monitoring the conditions inside the datacenter.
More updates, and a surprise feature coming soon!
Chuck Goolsbee
VP Tech Ops
digital.forest, Inc
posted by Chuck G. at 03:57 AM on Monday, October 29, 2007 Categories:Datacenter Expansion
It has been a long time since we've updated you with progress on our datacenter expansion, mostly because the project has been delayed by weather. The last part of our current expansion involves work on our roof, and we've had roughly six straight weeks of rainy weather here in the Pacific Northwest. Not shocking to anyone, but usually September and early October are rather mild and dry around here. That is until we want to open up holes in our roof!
So here is what the roof looks like as of today:
Sharp eyed observers will note the lack of rainfall and unusually clear skies. The forecast calls for stable, mostly clear weather for the next several days. That means we're rolling again! Our primary contractor McDonald-Miller should be starting their roof penetrations very soon. We have to create openings in the roof for cold air supply, and hot air return for the datacenter. The supply goes into the existing cold air plenum, and the returns will be new openings in datacenter two. These should happen between now and Friday, along with roofing work to surround them.
After that we'll be erecting a steel superstructure across the section of rooftop you see above. This will be attached to the main vertical supports of the building. On top of that will be room for several HVAC units. We'll start with just two, which will more than double our current cooling capacity. The beauty of this design is that it will allow us to expand our cooling capacity easily, with minimal impact on the building itself. It also means we can add much more cooling capacity than was envisioned by the building's designers. They originally planned for HVAC units that sit directly on the roof itself. Here are photographs of our existing units:
Above: This is our main HVAC system. It is a 75 ton Trane Intellipak with a humidity control unit. It is hard to see from this angle due to the duct work hiding the main unit, but it is HUGE and covers virtually all of the south end of the building's roof.
Above: This is our Secondary HVAC system. It is also a Trane IntelliPak, but has a capacity of 48 tons. It is much smaller than our primary since it lacks a humidity control unit and has less capacity and no external duct work.
You can see how these units sit directly on the roof, requiring large curbs and tie-down systems. Our new units will be attached to the steel superstructure which will actually be above the roof itself by a meter or so. This takes the load bearing job off the roof and transmits it directly to the building's frame. The original design planned for four HVAC units, with this new design we'll be able to accommodate double that.
Stay tuned for updates as work progresses.
posted by Chuck G. at 02:15 AM on Tuesday, October 23, 2007 Categories:Datacenter Expansion
We reached a major milestone in our datacenter expansion project this week. Our new rooftop air conditioner units arrived at the Fabrication Shop of MacDonald-Miller, our HVAC systems vendor. We had a lunchtime excursion to inspect them on Wednesday. They are impressive little units:
Of course "little" is a relative term here, as they are in reality quite large. I say "little" because of their overall compact design compared to our existing equipment, which is identical in terms of capacity, but much larger in terms of size. These new units will do the same job while taking up less space on our rooftop. Here is another photo with some people in it to give you an idea of scale:
Of course, just like kids on Christmas morning we had to open up all the doors and panels and look inside:
Larry Harbison (MacDonald-Miller) and Kevin Teker (digital.forest) have the tools out and are opening up the panels and doors. Shawn Hammer gets out of their way.
"ooooh.. aaahhh"
Yes, we know it is kind of weird to see grown men getting all thrilled about big machinery. But somebody has to care about this stuff, right? If you boil it down to the very basics, we are in the business of transforming electricity into bits. Electricity comes in, and all the computers turn that into bits. Bits which flow out of our facility via the network. The by-product of that transformation is heat. Computers generate lots of heat, but they can't operate in a hot environment so we need to protect them by creating a cool environment. This is what HVAC equipment does. It takes electricity, combines it with the heat expelled by the computers and makes cold air out of the two. This we pump into the datacenter to cool the computers.
HVAC units are measured by their capacity, which is expressed in tons. The system in your home or office is probably measured between 3 and 5 tons of capacity. In our case, things are just a bit bigger:
Both of these new units are rated at 70 tons each. That is not their weight, but a measure of their cooling capacity. Our existing system is a 75 ton unit, and by adding these two we're roughly tripling our cooling capacity to 215 tons. (In reality it will be 263 tons as we currently have 48 tons of reserve capacity in another, backup unit, but it is only really there as a safety net, so it does not count in the basic calculation.)
In addition to their compact size, these new air conditioners are very cool (pardon the pun) for their energy efficiency and excellent features. These new units can meet the same capacity as our old systems while using 33% less electricity. In the datacenter business that is vital as computers consume more and more power. Cooling is the hidden cost of the power usage; for every amp dedicated to running computers there is usually between one and two amps used to cool those computers. The more we can shift that ratio away from cooling and towards computers the better.
A great benefit to being here in Seattle is the predominantly cool weather we enjoy. This allows us to use units like these which have large "Make Up Air Handlers", meaning that when the outside temperatures are at or below ideal datacenter temperature, which in Seattle is most of the year, they can use outside air to cool the facility. This contributes significantly to their energy efficiency. It also allows us to avoid chilled water systems, raised floors, under-floor plumbing, and floor-space robbing CRAC (Computer Room Air Conditioner) units.
To complete the tour, here are some shots of the inside of our new HVAC systems:
Above: Supply fan motors and composite material fan blades
Above: Make Up Air louvers and filtration.
Above: Just a few fuses inside the electrical panel.
At this stage in our growth, we need about 80 tons of cooling on the hottest days of the year, so our plan is to have full-unit redundancy. In other words always have a single 70-ton unit in reserve. This means we can shut down an entire HVAC system for maintenance or repair while still being able to cool our datacenter on the hottest day of summer. The reason for our selection of these compact units is to allow us to grow and continue to add cooling capacity at that full-unit redundancy.
These units were custom-made for us by Aaon in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The next phase is to install them on our roof. More detail on that project will be coming soon.
Chuck Goolsbee
VP Technical Operations
digital.forest, Inc.
posted by Chuck G. at 01:35 AM on Friday, September 21, 2007 Categories:Datacenter Expansion
We successfully completed our UPS upgrade work today. We were able to transfer to generator power, bypass the UPS, shut down the UPS, perform the work, the reverse the whole process and restore grid power. Everything worked as planned and as expected. We spent approximately 2.3 hours on backup power.
Above you can see the UPS Technician from MGE performing some circuit board replacements and firmware upgrades on our bypass switch.
Below you can see a gauge that shows the output from our backup power generator system. Running our entire facility's load, which includes all the servers and all of our mechanical systems (air conditioners, humidity controls, fans, etc) uses only 22% of our backup power system's capacity. Lots of room to grow.
Stay tuned for more news about our datacenter facility expansion.
Chuck Goolsbee
VP Technical Operations
digital.forest, Inc.
Between the hours of 9am and 12pm, Thursday, September 20th we will be performing maintenance on our UPS system, which will include upgrading some control boards and updating to the latest firmware. This is the final step in our recent UPS upgrade.
While this maintenance is being performed we will put the UPS system and grid power in bypass and operate the datacenter on generator power. This is standard procedure for work such as this.
While we do not expect any change in power delivery, any time power is switched from one source to another, a risk of interruption is possible. Every effort and precaution will be taken to minimize this risk.
Thank You,
--Chuck Goolsbee
VP, Technical Operations
digital.forest, Inc.
Tomorrow, Friday August 31st, between 8 AM and 10 AM our new UPS will be turned up. This procedure requires us to go into bypass mode on the entire UPS system. We will have the backup power generation system running. As always, any power transfer carries a risk of interruption, however we feel confident that this procedure will go smoothly and have no impact on service. We have tested the bypass system recently during our UPS preventative maintenance cycle, and the main power transfer switch is tested regularly and has also been triggered automatically by grid power failures a few times over the past year so we're confident in its operation.
We will post updates to this page prior to, and after the conclusion of the UPS turn-up.
Uptdate: 14:15 PDT
We have completed the UPS infrastructure work and are back to normal operations. Our power system performed as expected and there were no interuptions to any of our systems.
During this maintenance, our generator provided power for the datacenter for 3 hours and 44 minutes. This consumed approximately 150 gallons of the 5000 gallons of diesel fuel we have on site.
Our electrical feed is now backed-up by 4 independant strings of batteries and two parallel UPS modules. Output is 450 KVA or 360KW for 15 minutes (the generator supplies power to the UPS system in the first 15 to 20 seconds after a power failure from the public grid) of UPS runtime.
On Wednesday, September 5th we will be provisioning two new PDU's (Power Distribution Units). This activity has no potential for disruption and will simply increase the amount of power availabel to distribute in the datacenter.
Our new UPS, which arrived into its final destination in our UPS room last week is in the process of being installed. Tonight marked a major milestone in our datacenter expansion.
Our electrical contractor, Veca has had a crew here hard at work since the day after the UPS' arrival, preparing it for turn-up. Lots of conduit, cable, and connections to be setup. Tonight came the dangerous work of wiring the input to the electrical bypass cabinet. It is an unavoidable "hot" job that requires extensive preparation, tools, and safety procedures. I was not even allowed to be in the UPS room with them during that part of the work. I sat outside the closed door like an expectant father outside the delivery room. I was allowed in after the wiring was finished and they had thrown the input breaker and tested the voltage. Below you can see the three-man crew buttoning up the UPS after the job was done and everything was turned back off again:
Tomorrow a technician from the UPS manufacturer will be on-site to perform an inspection of the electrical installation and the communications wiring between the cabinets. Friday is the scheduled "turn-up" day. We'll start September with twice the available power we enjoyed in August.
After tonight's job was all finished I invited the electrical crew out onto our office deck into the warm night air for a well-deserved refreshing beverage. Cheers guys! ... to a job well done.
Stay tuned for updates as work progresses.
--Chuck Goolsbee
VP Technical Operations
digital.forest Inc.
posted by Chuck G. at 05:02 PM on Wednesday, August 29, 2007 Categories:Datacenter Expansion
Today was a big day, and began early. By dawn's early light...
Our new UPS gear has been taking up some of our parking spaces in the secured garage downstairs. In order to get in up to and through the roof we had to get it out of the garage, then up the hillside to the west side of the building where the crane could pick them up and bring them up to the new access door in the roof. The plan sounds easy enough but the devil is in the details as they say. The garage has rather low clearance so it took a pair of forklifts to get the equipment staged, one small one for the garage work, then another larger, more powerful one for the climb up the hill.
Above: Facilities Manager (and certified forklift operator/instructor) Kevin Teker drives a battery cabinet out of the parking garage.
Above: The units staged outside the garage, ready for their trip up the hill...
Meanwhile, up on the roof...
...the access door cap is removed and put away. While down in the parking lot we prepped the space for the crane. By the way, the view of Mt. Rainier from the roof at dawn is quite nice...
The crane arrived right on schedule and set up in the prepared spot. It was an impressive sight when fully extended.
It took quite a while to get the rigging setup just right. The crane operator and rigger did some test rigs, and then "flew" a battery cabinet an inch or two off the ground. It was subjected to shaking and stress to test the rigging. If it falls an inch or two, the damage and safety risk is minimized, but the operator and rigger can test the integrity of the setup. As the crane operator said, "If it flies an inch fine, it will fly the whole way fine, but if it fails at only an inch it is unlikely to kill somebody." Fair enough. We picked a battery cabinet for the first item to "fly" as we have two of those and if we lost one, we could still operate. Rigging tested and the professionals confident, the moment of truth arrived.
Above: First Flight. The battery cabinet goes first. Here it clears the roof and is about to swing in towards the access door.
Above: The first item to pass through our new UPS Room access, a battery cabinet.
The battery cabinet lands on the floor with the greatest of ease, and is put away with a pallet-jack. Next up, quite literally is the UPS itself.
When it touched down on the UPS floor deck I felt a great sense of relief. There was still one more item to arrive though. The last battery cabinet arrived and I invited our CEO, Kris Bourne, and VP of Sales, David Anderson to come in and have a look.
Kris is barely visible behind David, peering up through the access door and congratulating Kevin Teker (up on the roof) on a job well done.
The rigging secured, Kevin radios the crane operator to go up and away. This part of the job is done!
Next up: New PDUs and Installing the new UPS.
posted by Chuck G. at 08:05 PM on Thursday, August 23, 2007 Categories:Datacenter Expansion
When Plan A won't work, you fall back on Plan B. What happens if that won't work?
It has been more than three weeks since our last mention of our new UPS. It has been a busy month, with a lot of glancing back into the mists of time and collective head scratching.
We love our building, we really do, but sometimes we wonder what the designers and builders were thinking back in those crazy "dot com boom" days. So first, a short history review: We are located in the largest datacenter campus in North America, Sabey's Intergate.Seattle complex. It was built in the heyday of the datacenter building boom between 1998 and 2001. The original tenants were Zama Networks, Netstream Inc. and Microsoft. Two of those companies vanished in 2001, I bet you can spot which two. We moved here back in early 2005. The building was purpose-built to be a datacenter and in many ways is ideal. The folks who built it had LOTS of money, and the best engineers and architects. The only thing they didn't have was time. Once in a while you look at things and realize how rush jobs can come back to haunt you... even indirectly.
Above: Panorama of our UPS room. On the extreme left is our existing UPS, a 180kW/225KVA MGE EPS6000. To the right of it is our wooden "wire frame" UPS mock-up, and in front of it some tape outlining the location of the battery cabinets. In the middle is the switching and bypass gear with all the conduit above for both the old and new UPS. In the background are our Facility Manager and a tech from our fire suppression systems vendor preparing for today's job. On the extreme right is the stairway and door into the UPS room from the main datacenter.
Our facility is on the top floor of the building and has a specifically-engineered UPS room, with a substantially reinforced floor to support the weight of many UPS'. We can place close to 60,000 lbs of equipment in there. Our new UPS weighs ~4500lbs. The two battery cabinets weigh in at ~3500lbs each. Plan A was to bring them up in the elevator but size and weight contraints, even of the larger of the two lifts here prevented that. Plan B was to crane them up to the deck outside the datacenter and roll them into the facility with industrial rollers and winch them up our purpose-built ramps. This is how the existing units arrived here when the facility was built, minus the ramps of course. Apparently they originally used jacks and it took all day. Our building owner, and their engineers ruled that out for structural reasons. The UPS room floor is more than sturdy enough to support them, but they worried about the point loads during the rolls across the regular floor. They admitted that it had been done once before, but without some way to distribute the point loads, rolling was out of the question. We could have built a superstructure of steel plate from the deck to the UPS room, but that route has two ninety-degree bends that would make the actual rolling part very tough if done on top of a structure. Then of course is the whole problem of getting the superstructure up into the datacenter as well! We now had to come up with Plan C. We spent more time with Structural Engineers, in fact the very same ones that originally designed the building and at one point, the Engineer Of Record said: "You know, we really didn't consider the problem of moving heavy equipment into and out of this room."
A shocking admission. But the legacy we have to manage. So our Facilities Manager and the Structural Engineers came up with not only a way to get heavy equipment in, but also a way to get it out: Through the roof.
Literally in the space of less than a week, we came up with the idea, prepared plans and structural drawings, fabricated parts, arranged a crane, scheduled a roofer, and got all the permissions and blessings required. That is a lot of work, many hurdles, and a few hoops jumped through in a short amount of time. Not only that but we ALSO effectively UNPAINTED ourselves out of the corner the original builders painted themselves into. We redesigned the placement of equipment in the UPS room to allow greater maintenance access, and more importantly the ability to move any single part in or out without impediment from the other equipment, or potential interruption of service!
We also have allowed ourselves room for larger UPS units than what could even be fit through the existing door. If we need or want larger units, say 500 or 750 KVA UPS gear, we can now get them into our facility.
Here is how we spent our day today:
Above: On the left is the curb and cap for our new access to the UPS room. The room's exhaust fan has been removed, and a tech from MacDonald-Miller is preparing the roof for work.
Above: Roofers have cut away the roofing material and insulation to expose the pan deck below. The hole is where the exhaust fan used to be. We positively pressurized the UPS room with our air handling equipment so that any small particles were forced out of the room. There was a strong wind coming out of that exhaust hole, but it prevented any insulation material from being pulled in.
Above: The Mac-Miller techs remove a section of pan decking. The UPS room is below. Facilities Manager Kevin Teker is assisting on the left. He's turning his head to keep the wind from inside the room out of his face. It is unusual to experience a pressurized room. Standing inside it, you have no sensation of pressure. Standing near the opening, like the tech on the ladder in the hole, you feel a mild breeze. Outside the hole, where Kevin and the tech running the saw are, it is like a blast of air. You can see the tech running the saw... his hair standing straight out, where the tech in the hole in unruffled. What this did was blow the debris of this job up and out, onto the roof, rather than down and in, putting equipment at risk. Access to the UPS room was limited to only when the no cutting or peeling was going on, otherwise the pressure would change enough to risk fine debris being pulled in. The big stuff is OK as it falls straight down and can be picked up. It is the lightweight, fine debris that you have to make sure goes out, rather than in.
Above: Kevin cleans up. Cleanliness is always a very important aspect of any work in and around an active datacenter. You must keep the work areas clean throughout the entire procedure.
Above: The view from inside the UPS room. This opening was specifically designed to be as large as possible. It is significantly larger than our new UPS. This will allow us to install larger UPS' if we need them. Here the Mac-Miller technicians prepare the edges of the opening for the installation of the curb.
Above: The Mac-Miller techs and the Roofer are almost done. The curb is installed, the cap is on, and the exhaust fan re-installed in the cap. The cap is insulated and water-proof, yet lightweight and removable by two people.
Above: Our new access door from inside. Tomorrow we'll open it up and drop the UPS and battery cabinets through it with a crane. Friday the electricians start the installation process.
Our new Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) is a rather large heavy box, with heavy being the operative word. Our UPS room has a purpose-built, reinforced floor specifically to bear the weight of several UPS units. The problem to solve of course is getting the UPS into the room. It is heavy enough that the point loads on the standard floor need to be minimized. It is also large enough to make negotiating hallways and doors very difficult. The final obstacle is lifting it up to the raised special-load floor of the UPS room itself through a door.
This UPS is a twin to the one we have now, so we know it can be done. We have spoken to the people who installed the first one and we'll be trying to benefit from that experience. Instead of jacks, we opted for a set of ramps. The question then becomes clearance. We did the math. We did the math again. We made diagrams and plans. The calculations said it would work, but it would be VERY close. Our Facilities Manager Kevin Teker had the ramps fabricated and we set them up on blocks in place. With our margin of clearance so close, we measured again several times and it was just too close to be absolutely confident that once we started to move the UPS that it would actually fit.
Nothing left to do but build a model and make a test run.
Kevin and our summer intern Chris set about building a wooden frame that would exactly match the dimensions of our new UPS. We would then use it, plus some wooden blocks that would do stand-in duty for the industrial rollers used to move the UPS up the ramps to check the clearances.
Above you can see the wooden frame UPS model taking shape behind Kevin (standing) and Chris (the intern, sitting on the floor). In the foreground right are our steel ramps. This view is through the door that the UPS must travel.
We set up the ramps next, and place the model frame on them to check clearances. The ramps will remain semi-installed until we are done moving all the new equipment into the UPS room, then go into storage until next time we have to move something in or out. Kevin designed them to bolt into the steel floor sub-frame for lateral stability, and use wooden dunnage for vertical support.
Above Kevin checks the clearance of the top of the model in relation to the door frame. It matches our initial calculations to within a centimeter. The overall clearance however is just over two centimeters, so you can see why we wanted to confirm our calculations. In the inset on the right he re-checks the measurements against the already installed UPS.
Next we have to check on the clearances as we roll the model UPS up the ramps and onto the floor above.
Here you see Kevin Teker sliding the model from level on the datacenter floor, up onto the ramps and through the door onto the UPS room floor. Kyle Murray our Network Manager looks on. Our multi-faceted trigonometry problem, which worked on paper, also works in real life. As you can see, the tolerances are close, but the model moved through the door frame with enough clearance to have us resting easy and ready for the real thing.
If Kevin is happy, we're happy.
Next comes moving the real thing. After that comes the installation and turn up. The goal is 360,000 Watts of redundant power. Stay tuned for more updates.
posted by Chuck G. at 06:15 PM on Friday, August 3, 2007 Categories:Datacenter Expansion
I'm very pleased to announce that digital.forest is once again expanding our Seattle datacenter. We've been planning and budgeting for quite a while, but now the real work begins. What you see above is the shiny new UPS which arrived last week. It will be going into our UPS room very soon. It will more than double our capacity to deliver continuous, clean power to our customer's servers.
Additional projects slated for this expansion include:
More 3-phase PDUs
This will allow us to deliver more power to both our existing and our newly constructed datacenter spaces.
Two new 70 ton air handling units
These will provide cooling and air handling for our facility far into the future. We'll enjoy greater than N+1 cooling capacity. We'll also be expanding our cold air delivery ducting, as well as adding a hot aisle containment and return system. This will optimize our cooling abilities and allow even greater electrical densities on the datacenter floor.
Expansion into previously unfinished space
We'll be adding approximately 3500sq' of finished datacenter bringing our total to just under 10,000sq'. All of this space will include "cage" collocation, where clients can have private, card-keyed access to their equipment. This space will be built and maintained to the high standard that digital.forest clients have come to expect. With Ecaro25 Fire Suppression systems, static-shedding floor materials, custom HVAC ducting & lighting, custom network configurations, and 24-hour access, we are able to furnish a top-tier datacenter to house your critical IT environment.
It was only last November that we finished our last facility expansion, and that space is close to being almost fully committed! Keep an eye on our support blog for updates and photographs as we begin construction.
Regards,
Chuck Goolsbee
V.P. Technical Operations,
digital.forest, Inc.
posted by Chuck G. at 04:27 PM on Tuesday, July 31, 2007 Categories:Datacenter Expansion
That is a tower of power you see above. It is the new benchmark for electrical density here at digital.forest. 528 Watts per square foot'. We know that isn't a world record, but it is a very respectable number for a colocation facility here in the Seattle area. Few can approach it, much less match it.
We can't share the name of the client (shhh... they are a startup in "stealth mode") so we've blurred the pictures a bit and removed any identifying marks. They are however VERY happy that they found digital.forest.
Prior to being here, they were colocated at a competitor. They were NOT allowed to put this many servers into their rack at this competitor. In fact, in order to have this many servers, they had to buy FOUR RACKS.
We think that's nuts. So did our new client. Now they are happily colocated at digital.forest and can do it all in one rack.
At digital.forest we are here to assist our clients to succeed, not restrict them from what they need. It is just one part of the digital.forest difference.
Since late last summer, we've been posting occasional updates about our construction progress concerning our datacenter expansion. The reality is that construction was complete at the end of October. We had pre-sold the space to three separate clients, who required colocation cages ranging in size from 300sq' to 700sq'.
We spent November and December preparing those cages. The first client moved into their cage in December. The next moved into their colocation space in late January, in an all-nighter cut-and-move that went off with admirable precision. Our final pre-sale client actually relocated from a set of cabinets in our main facility into a custom cage, with plenty of room to handle their amazing rapid growth (more about them in an upcoming post.) Their move was completed just two weeks ago.
There is still some post-move cleanup to do, but were very proud of our new space, and feel the time is right to unveil it and open it up for further sale. We have over a thousand square feet available, which can be subdivided by cages from 100sq' to 1000sq'. Plenty of power and cooling is available, as we have barely tapped 10% of what our power feed can deliver.
Stay tuned for more expansion news, as we are set to soon take over the entire floor of our building. Meanwhile, enjoy the view of our freshly finished facility expansion:
