Search
  • Videos
  • Windows 10
  • 5G
  • Best VPNs
  • Cloud
  • Security
  • AI
  • more
    • TR Premium
    • Working from Home
    • Innovation
    • Best Web Hosting
    • ZDNet Recommends
    • Tonya Hall Show
    • Executive Guides
    • ZDNet Academy
    • See All Topics
    • White Papers
    • Downloads
    • Reviews
    • Galleries
    • Videos
    • TechRepublic Forums
  • Newsletters
  • All Writers
    • Preferences
    • Community
    • Newsletters
    • Log Out
  • Menu
    • Videos
    • Windows 10
    • 5G
    • Best VPNs
    • Cloud
    • Security
    • AI
    • TR Premium
    • Working from Home
    • Innovation
    • Best Web Hosting
    • ZDNet Recommends
    • Tonya Hall Show
    • Executive Guides
    • ZDNet Academy
    • See All Topics
    • White Papers
    • Downloads
    • Reviews
    • Galleries
    • Videos
    • TechRepublic Forums
      • Preferences
      • Community
      • Newsletters
      • Log Out
  • us
    • Asia
    • Australia
    • Europe
    • India
    • United Kingdom
    • United States
    • ZDNet around the globe:
    • ZDNet France
    • ZDNet Germany
    • ZDNet Korea
    • ZDNet Japan

Pacnet's expanded Sydney datacentre: Gallery

4 of 13 NEXT PREV
  • datacentre1.png

    Telecommunications services provider Pacnet last week held an event celebrating the expansion of its Sydney CBD datacentre and its partnership with services provider E-Bit Systems.

    Pacnet first launched the initially AU$40 million facility in February 2011 with 260 racks.

    It completed the expansion of the datacentre in June this year, adding 360 racks to support its cloud and co-location services as part of the company's strategy to grow its Asia-Pacific presence.

    "As the pulse of the Australian economy, Sydney is a key part of our expansion plans," Pacnet president of managed services Jim Fagan said at the time.

    The company now takes up three levels with its datacentre in the Liverpool Street, Sydney, building, which has been used to store datacentres since the 1970s.

    In March, Pacnet also announced plans to open an SG$90 million datacentre in Singapore. It has its headquarters in Singapore and Hong Kong, with offices also located in China, Australia, the US, Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Thailand. It has 18 datacentre facilities in the world, including two in Australia, making its content delivery network (CDN) attractive to major web providers looking to deliver content in Australia.

    Published: October 25, 2013 -- 04:23 GMT (21:23 PDT)

    Photo by: Corinne Reichert/ZDNet

    Caption by: Corinne Reichert

  • datacentre2.png

    Founded in 2000, E-Bit Systems is an IT management consultancy that provides enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), business intelligence (BI), and systems integration solutions for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Australia and New Zealand.

    Stressing reliability, availability, scalability, security, and resilience, Providence Solutions Australia, a division of E-Bit Systems, focuses on availability and continuous computing rather than recovery; emphasising preventing downtime over speeding up recovery time. The Sydney Pacnet datacentre is one such facility that it provides these services for.

    "Efficient storage, access, and delivery of digital data has become critical," said Nigel Stitt, Australia and New Zealand CEO of Pacnet. He said the partnership between E-Bit and Pacnet will provide customers with a one-stop shop for their datacentre needs.

    Pacnet's datacentre facility has dedicated hardware-as-a-service racks for the pay-as-you-go model of doing business as a more flexible solution.

    Published: October 25, 2013 -- 04:23 GMT (21:23 PDT)

    Photo by: Corinne Reichert/ZDNet

    Caption by: Corinne Reichert

  • datacentre3.png

    As a Tier III datacentre, the Pacnet facility has an uptime service-level agreement (SLA) of 99.99 percent. In order to fulfil this SLA, the datacentre's disaster recovery system consists of a triple substation onsite to pair with the generators. The substations are linked to several active and passive uninterruptable power supply (UPS) systems, which are run in a chain wherein if one fails, the power goes to another. There are seven generators on the roof to provide in the event of power from the substation going out. The datacentre is on the city grid, meaning a significant portion of Sydney CBD would have to lose power for the substation to be affected.

    "It's about how many nines of availability you can achieve ... what we are now getting into is the business applications — emails, CRM, databases — which are kind of sitting in the level three capability of four nines of availability; effectively, it's less than an hour of downtime in a year ... this is all achieved through software, not hardware," said Atul Thapar, managing director of E-Bit Systems.

    The datacentre facility has multi-layered security, with a card swipe, fingerprint recognition (above), and surveillance cameras installed.

    Published: October 25, 2013 -- 04:23 GMT (21:23 PDT)

    Photo by: Corinne Reichert/ZDNet

    Caption by: Corinne Reichert

  • datacentre4.png

    The UPS (above) units convert street power to DC to charge the batteries. Electrical mains go through the UPS at all times, keeping the datacentre running and the batteries charged; if power cuts out, it switches over to the batteries inside the UPS.

    "UPSes, they protect you from power failures, but they also have their limitations. They don't give you 100 percent protection," Thapar said.

    Published: October 25, 2013 -- 04:23 GMT (21:23 PDT)

    Photo by: Corinne Reichert/ZDNet

    Caption by: Corinne Reichert

  • datacentre5.png

    The datacentre houses dozens of power distribution units (PDUs) and static transfer switches (STS) on each level. The PDU (right) is fitted with several outputs for distributing electrical power to the racks, while the STS is used to rapidly balance the power load between two sources, minimising downtime within the datacentre and protecting the equipment from power surges and slumps.

    Published: October 25, 2013 -- 04:23 GMT (21:23 PDT)

    Photo by: Corinne Reichert/ZDNet

    Caption by: Corinne Reichert

  • datacentre6.png

    Chilled water (left), kept at 6.5 degrees Celsius, is fed through a fully isolated loop into the computer room air conditioning (CRAC) units to cool the air in the server rooms.

    The CRAC units (right) surround the datacentre, cooling the air for a consistent 22 degrees Celsius air temperature over each entire level.

    Published: October 25, 2013 -- 04:23 GMT (21:23 PDT)

    Photo by: Corinne Reichert/ZDNet

    Caption by: Corinne Reichert

  • datacentre7.png

    Fan speed is controlled by the CRACs, which send air flow down into the floor and up through vents in front of the racks. The air coming through the vents is 17 degrees Celsius, which enables a guaranteed front-of-rack temperature of 21 degrees Celsius.

    Published: October 25, 2013 -- 04:23 GMT (21:23 PDT)

    Photo by: Corinne Reichert/ZDNet

    Caption by: Corinne Reichert

  • datacentre8.png

    The servers belonging to Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA)-regulated companies have to be separated from the other racks by cages as per the statutory authority's requirements. The government has also mandated that the racks be double thick in these cases.

    Access to these high-security racks is by both a swipe card and a fingerprint scanner.

    Published: October 25, 2013 -- 04:23 GMT (21:23 PDT)

    Photo by: Corinne Reichert/ZDNet

    Caption by: Corinne Reichert

  • datacentre9.png

    Pacnet runs its communications cables (left) above the racks, utilising both fibre and copper on all levels. The cables for powering each of the components are stored below the floor (right), with easy access through numerous removable floor panels.

    Published: October 25, 2013 -- 04:23 GMT (21:23 PDT)

    Photo by: Corinne Reichert/ZDNet

    Caption by: Corinne Reichert

  • datacentre10.png

    Pacnet's Network Operations Centre operates 24/7, with staff always on hand to attend to any issues that may arise with the hardware and middleware.

    Published: October 25, 2013 -- 04:23 GMT (21:23 PDT)

    Photo by: Corinne Reichert/ZDNet

    Caption by: Corinne Reichert

  • datacentre11.png

    The Network Operations Centre has maps of each datacentre level's internals on display, showing system and hardware errors or any other issues being reported. Pacnet has teams onsite to monitor the panels, flag problems, and repair any hardware or middleware failures to ensure continued uptime.

    Published: October 25, 2013 -- 04:23 GMT (21:23 PDT)

    Photo by: Corinne Reichert/ZDNet

    Caption by: Corinne Reichert

  • datacentre12.png

    Pacnet's brand new, as yet still unused datacentre expansion level will take 416 standard 19-inch server racks. The PDU and STS units have already been installed, and the cooling vents are in place.

    Published: October 25, 2013 -- 04:23 GMT (21:23 PDT)

    Photo by: Corinne Reichert/ZDNet

    Caption by: Corinne Reichert

  • datacentre13.png

    The new datacentre has plastic yellow housing tracks for the fibre-optic cables to run through above the racks. The fibre power boxes can be taken apart anywhere, with Pacnet's Stitt stressing the "modular" way in which this new expansion has been built. The modular datacentre can be upgraded without it having to power down, and allows greater flexibility for customers to scale their capacity.

    Published: October 25, 2013 -- 04:23 GMT (21:23 PDT)

    Photo by: Corinne Reichert/ZDNet

    Caption by: Corinne Reichert

4 of 13 NEXT PREV
Corinne Reichert

By Corinne Reichert | October 25, 2013 -- 04:23 GMT (21:23 PDT) | Topic: Data Centers

  • datacentre1.png
  • datacentre2.png
  • datacentre3.png
  • datacentre4.png
  • datacentre5.png
  • datacentre6.png
  • datacentre7.png
  • datacentre8.png
  • datacentre9.png
  • datacentre10.png
  • datacentre11.png
  • datacentre12.png
  • datacentre13.png

Last week, ZDNet was invited on a tour of Pacnet's recently expanded Tier III Sydney CBD datacentre.

Read More Read Less

The UPS (above) units convert street power to DC to charge the batteries. Electrical mains go through the UPS at all times, keeping the datacentre running and the batteries charged; if power cuts out, it switches over to the batteries inside the UPS.

"UPSes, they protect you from power failures, but they also have their limitations. They don't give you 100 percent protection," Thapar said.

Published: October 25, 2013 -- 04:23 GMT (21:23 PDT)

Caption by: Corinne Reichert

4 of 13 NEXT PREV

Related Topics:

Hardware Servers Networking Storage Cloud
Corinne Reichert

By Corinne Reichert | October 25, 2013 -- 04:23 GMT (21:23 PDT) | Topic: Data Centers

Show Comments
LOG IN TO COMMENT
  • My Profile
  • Log Out
| Community Guidelines

Join Discussion

Add Your Comment
Add Your Comment

Related Galleries

  • 1 of 3
  • A peek inside NextDC’s S2 data centre

    NextDC let ZDNet inside its second of three facilities in Sydney. Here’s a look at the 30MW facility located in Macquarie Park, 13 kilometres north-west of the Sydney CBD. ...

  • What a brand new data center looks like - from the inside

    Kao Data has just started operating a 40,000 square feet data center at the heart of the UK's "innovation corridor", between London, Cambridge and Stansted. This is what 8.8MW of data ...

  • Pictures: Inside Lenovo's new Beijing campus

    Lenovo showed journalists around its recently opened campus in Beijing, which aims to create a 'Silicon Valley environment' for its 10,000-plus employees. ...

  • High-performance storage: From flash drives to server hard drives (April 2018 edition)

    A tour of the best storage solutions available for professionals, covering everything from flash drives you can pop into your pocket to behemoth server-grade hard drives. ...

  • Photos: Inside Apple, Facebook, Google, IBM's frozen Nordic datacenters

    The Nordic countries' low outside temperatures, cheap power, and stable economies are proving hard for tech giants to resist when it comes to siting new datacenters. ...

  • Photos: Inside vast abandoned mine set to be world's biggest data center

    Norway's newest white-space data center has opened in a former mine. Lefdal Mine Datacenter could become the world's largest once of three of its five levels are filled. ...

  • The 10 scariest cloud outages (and lessons learned from them)

    With more businesses and applications moving data to the cloud, even small outages can be devastating. By studying the worst cloud fails, we can find clues to avoiding future problems. ...

ZDNet
Connect with us

© 2021 ZDNET, A RED VENTURES COMPANY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Privacy Policy | Cookie Settings | Advertise | Terms of Use

  • Topics
  • Galleries
  • Videos
  • Sponsored Narratives
  • Do Not Sell My Information
  • About ZDNet
  • Meet The Team
  • All Authors
  • RSS Feeds
  • Site Map
  • Reprint Policy
  • Manage | Log Out
  • Join | Log In
  • Membership
  • Newsletters
  • Site Assistance
  • ZDNet Academy
  • TechRepublic Forums