Telkom’s R350-million cybernest details
Telkom recently launched a new environmentally friendly data centre in Bellville, Cape Town, under a new brand called Cybernest. This branding marks Telkom’s new Data Centre Operations (DCO) division’s move into the IT services field.
The data centre, named Bellville 2, cost in the region of R350-million for the entire new structure. It was designed using principles of global best practice, in order to bring it in line with modern demands for environmentally friendly and efficient business.
At the recent launch of the Cybernest brand, Telkom Group CEO Reuben September boasted that the design, capacity, and eco-friendly data centre is on par with the top 10% around the globe.
Bellville 2 provides 1600m² of floor space, and a total of 586 server racks. Cisco 3.0 data centre architecture was used in the design. To eliminate clutter, all racks are pre-provisioned with connectivity (multiple 10GigE OM3 fibre) which is neatly routed above the server racks. Within each rack cabinet, there is a real-time power management monitoring cable.
The data room floors are raised, providing a 1.2 m access space for cooling. The cooling system employs a ‘cold aisle’ to ‘hot aisle’ approach, meaning that cold air is channeled up through the floor in one aisle, and hot air is expelled into roof vents in the opposite aisle.
A total of 14 cooling modules can comfortably keep the centre cold when operating under full load and an outside air temperature of 40 °C. Air exhausted from the data rooms is on average 26 °C, and it is then re-cycled through the system to provide cooling air at 13 °C.
To offset the large amounts of electricity required for cooling (typically 33% of data centre electrical consumption), Bellville 2 is designed to take advantage of outside air when the outdoor temperature drops below 24 °C.
For power, there are dual 2400kW Uninterruptable Power Supplies (UPS) for the data room floor, each capable of powering the entire data room. There are dual 2300kW supplies for the cooling system.
Eskom provides power from two separate substations (Stikland and Oakdale) but as a failsafe, there are diesel generators off site. Four 16 cylinder 65.37 litre Mitsubishi engines, and two 20 cylinder 95.4 litre MTU Friedrichschafen engines can combine to guzzle the 78,000 litres of diesel stored on site, for 72 hours of standby full load power.
For fire safety, the data centre floors are monitored by an active laser air sampling system, which is 100 times more accurate than conventional detectors. The first defence against fire is an environmentally friendly gas – FM200 – which should douse any flames without damaging equipment. If a fire cannot be controlled with the gas extinguishers, the water system kicks in.
Adding value to the data centre service are the secure staging rooms, where clients can configure and assemble their systems without posing a risk the to the main data centre floor. Once ready, the system can be quickly added into a rack. A TelePresence facility is also available for communications between other Telkom data centres around the country.
A security centre monitors the facility 24 hours a day, through 177 cameras. The security centre is backed up with its own UPS. Movements are controlled with 182 proximity readers and 22 biometric and access code locks. The data cabinets are also locked, adding to the physical security.
Althon Beukes of the DCO discussed Bellville 2, saying: “Green IT is the answer to the energy problems in data centres. Virtualisation, air management and free cooling all play a role. Free cooling has significant benefits, for the environment, and reducing the total cost of [data centre] ownership.”
“We currently have a power utilisation efficiency rating of 1.6, but we hope to bring this down to 1.4 once in full operation,” Beukes concluded.
Telkom Cybernest – comments and views
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