Tag Archives: data centre

News, Technology

Keysource Launches State of the Industry Report

Keysource, the global data centre and critical environment specialist, has launched its State of the Industry Report 2022 which gathers the views and insights from over 250 IT Directors in UK & Europe. This is the fifth year of the report and it showed once again that the datacentre and technology sectors continue to grow with no signs of slowing, with investment growth being driven by continued digitalisation, IT transformation and data growth. This is despite the current global economic and political uncertainties.

In addition to the impact of this ongoing demand, the IT decision makers surveyed stated that they are continuing to shoulder a range of competing challenges and, as a result, over 99% believe it will be a difficult year. Over half of the respondents see security as the biggest challenge – up slightly from previous years – with sustainability a close second at 40%. However, the survey highlights multiple concerns with more than a third also citing pressure to adopt new technology and services, budget, access to skills and speed of change as major challenges.

In addition, 78% of respondents believe that their existing investments are preventing IT transformation – a figure similar to last year showing little or no progress in this area. This suggests that organisations are failing to understand the money savings change could bring, as they are focused on the investment and/or don’t want to admit they may have got it wrong.

This year’s focus on sustainability delivered some interesting insights. Clearly the topic and its importance is well understood but there are challenges about how this is being translated into action both for the services being consumed and/or delivered. For example, over half of the respondents admitted to not having a sustainability strategy at all, with 92% experiencing problems that are slowing or stopping their sustainability progress.

In response to the question: Where, if anywhere, do you think you can make the biggest carbon savings? – the overwhelming response was a move to using sustainable suppliers rather than looking to their own operations, usage and capacity. This opens up possible allegations of green washing and paints a picture of an industry that is full of good intentions but lacks the tools and expertise to deliver them. This mindset was clear once again for questions around the rising costs of power with 92% stating they were concerned. For about half of respondents the answer is a move towards renewables and an increase in budget – less than 50% are looking at reviewing capacity requirements showing that there is a lack of focus on consumption.

Jon Healy, Operations Director at Keysource, said: “We are operating in a world with a rapidly expanding social and economic consumption which relies on processing, data and transfer to be both secure and sustainable, alongside a skills shortage and severe supply chain issues. Our respondents need broader shoulders than ever to be able to carry all this responsibility. As an industry we are used to change and challenges but these might be our greatest ones yet.”

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To download the report please click here: https://keysource.co.uk/data-centre-industry-report/

Business, News

Secure I.T. Environments Completes Phased Major Data Centre Upgrade Project for Three Rivers District Council

Four phase project spanning over a year, including server room maintenance and replacement UPS, upgraded flooring, AHUs, building management systems, and new fire suppression cylinders

8 June 2022 – London, UK – Secure I.T. Environments Ltd, one of the UK’s leading design and build companies for modular, containerised and micro data centres, has today announced the completion of a multi-phase major upgrade project for the 70.8m2 main data centre at Three Rivers District Council. The site, at the main offices in Rickmansworth, provides essential digital services to public sector staff, and those used to support the local services that the district council provides.

The multi-phase project covered the following areas:

Server room UPS upgrade (phase 1) – The provision of a new energy efficiency UPS system, consisting of a Riello Multi Power Combo UPS cabinet, with two 25kW three-phase Power Modules. All UPS batteries were also replaced and a deep clean of the server room undertaken.

Server room flooring replacement (phase 2) – A phased and complete replacement of the existing carpeted raised access flooring tiles, with new vinyl tiles. Air flow was also improved with the strategic addition of vented grilles in the new floor.

Energy efficient AHU upgrade (phase 3) – Full replacement of two 20-year old air handling units (AHUs) with new energy efficient FlaktGroup Multi-DENCO® models. New locations were selected for the replacement condensers and the units were configured with a new Building Management Solutions (BMS) to manage the cooling environment in the server room.

Fire suppression (phase 4) – The final phase of the project was to replace the fire suppression gas bottles at the site, which had reached end of life. Following a full assessment of the existing system, Secure I.T. Environments provided a new fire suppression system, as well as the replacement cylinders, in order to ensure the system could provide protection long into the future.

Gary Cook, Data Centre Manager at Three Rivers District Council said, “At each stage of our major upgrade project, Secure I.T. Environments has delivered professionally in its consulting and on-site implementation of the work. Our project involved, multiple areas of a works in a live data centre, and the team at Secure I.T. completed all the works on time and to our expected standards.”

Chris Wellfair, Projects Director at Secure I.T. Environments added, “Whether building a new data centre, or undertaking major upgrade projects, we work very hard to ensure consistent standards and a minimum of disruption for our clients, with particular care and attention to those data centre services that need to remain live throughout the works.”

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity, News

Secure I.T. Environments Delivers Multi-Data Centre Project for UK Investment and Wealth Management Firm

Two projects completed, consisting of a data centre relocation and upgrade in just six weeks, followed by a disaster recover data centre build either side of a COVID lockdown.

13 April 2022 – London, UK – Secure I.T. Environments Ltd, one of the UK’s leading design and build companies for modular, containerised and micro data centres, has today announced that it has completed two major data centre projects for a UK financial investment and wealth management company. The two projects were a phased relocation of the primary data centre and a separate new disaster recovery data centre build.

The primary data centre relocation involved the relocation of equipment and upgrading the building mechanical and electrical infrastructure. This included the installation of a new Inmesol Volvo 100 KVA generator, four Mitsubishi air conditioning units in N+1 configuration, and the relocation of two existing Mitsubishi units. Secure I.T. Environments also installed a new incoming power supply to the site.

Phase two of this initial project focused on upgrading existing infrastructure in a number of key areas. The combined phases were completed in just six weeks. Secure I.T. Environments supplied and installed Novec and VESDA fire suppression systems in four rooms, two new cabinets, 14 intelligent PDUs, Jacarta Environment Monitoring System (EMS), and a flooring upgrade to vented floor tiles. A controlled shutdown was also undertaken during phase two to enable the installation of an Automatic Transfer Switch (ATS) generator panel.

“Migrating an established data centre to a new office, within a new geographical location was a huge logistical and technical challenge,” said a spokesperson for the company. “A data centre is considered the critical core of the business, so entrusting the critical fabric of its environment with a trusted partner was essential. The expertise and guidance provided by Secure I.T. Environments was comforting, they had the knowledge and expertise to ensure the project was a resounding success. The planning and implementation phases were executed with professionalism and quality, it was reassuring to know we had a trusted partner throughput this key project.”

A new disaster recovery DC

Project two was a new disaster recovery data centre build and infrastructure upgrade, completed in two phases either side of the COVID-19 lockdown spanning December 2020-January 2021. The project included installation of 7x42U cabinets, 6x intelligent PDUs, Riello UPS and a Jacarta EMS. Three new Mitsubishi air conditioning systems were installed, along with raised floor access and room soundproofing. A power upgrade to the server room was also completed.

Chris Wellfair, projects director at Secure I.T. Environments, added “We have managed multiple projects across the challenging circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic, with great communication and trust being very important. When working on multi-phase projects for customers, careful planning and a close working relationship is critical to success. The customer team was pivotal to our success in delivering these projects and managing the dynamic nature of changing lockdown rules.”

Data & Analytics, News

Response to Sungard’s News: Keep Your Data Close

Written by Peter Ruffley, CEO, Zizo

Following the news that the UK arm of Sungard Availability Services has gone into administration, this is an unfortunate wake up call for businesses who have an overreliance on data centres or the cloud, to ensure its data is available across multiple platforms. 

Businesses are starting to realise that a 100% reliance on cloud infrastructure is not the best approach to storing data, particularly when dealing with critical data points and critical information to the business. Instead, the industry has started to see movement towards on-premise solutions, specifically for mission critical systems. Instead with tremendous improvements in processing power and capability with on-premise and edge devices, having a balanced portfolio of data storage is key.

Firstly, it is vital that businesses ensure they have good data practice. The fundamental principles of this are both understanding the data and knowing where it is. For data success, organisations need to ensure that they have a grip on this – moving away from ‘shadow IT’ where the location of the data is unknown. 

One of the benefits of the cloud is the low cost storage of masses of data, and the relatively secure environment it offers. But just because you can store masses of data, it doesn’t mean you should. With the advances in edge computing, organisations can aggregate data so that they only store what they need to, precisely where it needs to be. Therefore, reliance on the cloud can be reduced, and control can be given to the business to deliver the data it needs. 

However, it doesn’t have to be a one-size-fits-all-solution. It’s fine to have backups and non-mission critical systems down at the edge or in a data centre, for example. But what happens if there is a comms outage? Or what happens if, similar to Sungard, your data centres become potentially compromised, either through a security breach or commercial issue? Reliance on one out-sourcing model is not the best approach to take – especially when across the globe, businesses have witnessed two years of uncertainty, and are still unsure of what is around the corner. 

Businesses of all sizes need to be more cautious and undertake careful planning to ensure that data doesn’t reside in just one place, but instead across multiple locations. Many may think this will complicate matters, but that doesn’t have to be the case. Instead, it is crucial that businesses, regardless of where its data is located, can access and analyse information without the need to change its location. 

There are opportunities to manage data in a much simpler, better way. For example, data federation, which is a software process that allows multiple databases to function as one. Just because data is stored in different places, doesn’t mean that it can’t be both accessible and queryable. Traditionally, data was categorised as ‘primary’, ‘secondary’ and ‘tertiary;’ at primary level, the data was accessible straight away, at a secondary level, the data was still accessible, but with limitations in place, whereas at a tertiary level, it involved multiple hurdles to gain access to the data. 

This tiering process needs to happen again – quickly. The best approach businesses can take, particularly following the Sungard news, is to keep the data that is important to them, close to them. In turn, the data that is ‘less important’ can be stored in the cloud, at the edge, or rather, utilise a hybrid approach – where the data is still available, but with the ability to query it if necessary.

News

Keysource Commits to Planting a Tree for every Order Received

Keysource, the global datacentre and critical environment specialist, has partnered with Tree-Nation and committed to planting a tree for every order it receives in a move designed to offset CO2 emissions on behalf of the company and its clients. Clients will have the opportunity to plant their tree and receive a ‘Tree Planting Certificate’ detailing the plantation project, Species of Tree and the all-important lifetime CO2 offset.

Tree-Nation’s mission is to reforest the work by planting trees, one of the most efficient solutions to fight climate change.  This helps not only to restore forests but also create jobs, support local communities and protect biodiversity. Since their inception in 2006 more than 6 million trees have been planted using their platform. Keysource has chosen to initially support the Eden Projects in Nepal as some of its colleagues are from that region and will consider other projects throughout the year, including some in the UK.

Jon Healy, Operations Director at Keysource, said: “We are committed to supporting our clients’ sustainable goals, whatever their drivers.  All eyes are on the corporate green agenda and it is imperative that businesses take the opportunity to reduce their carbon footprint, among other planet saving efforts. This is not just good business sense, it is also morally the right thing to do and our decision to partner with Tree Nation forms an important part of our ongoing CSR programme.”

Data, Law, News, Technology

Will The International Datacentre Sector Survive The 14 Day Quarantine?

Stephen Whatling, Chairman at BCS, considers the impact a 14 day quarantine period could have on the datacentre sector

The latest proposals by many countries, including the UK, to implement a 14-day quarantine period for people arriving from overseas has divided the UK between those that think it should have been sooner and others that see their hopes of a summer holiday disappear. There is however no doubt that it will have a major impact on the data centre sector which relies heavily on highly mobile staff with specialist expertise. And this is at a time when demand for capacity has never been higher and resilience is vital.

There is some good news as it seems that data centre operatives will be allowed to travel to and from the UK without having to quarantine on their return as the UK government advice gives exemption to ‘persons involved in essential maintenance and repair of data infrastructure required to reduce and resolve outages, or in the provision of goods and services to support these activities’. However different countries have different quarantine rules and there is no standardisation, even within Europe.

And this is only part of the issue. The availability of flights will probably remain an issue as airlines decide upon their economic models but are inevitably going to be more expensive as they won’t be at capacity. This may well prevent essential cross-border journeys that data centre specialists regularly make to provide much needed service and maintenance.
All of this is of course exacerbated by the well documented skills shortage which means that our sector often relies upon being able to move a small group of uniquely skilled experts between datacentres and construction sites in different countries. This skills shortage will get worse before it gets better. Many graduate vacancies and apprenticeship schemes, both vital in the ongoing provision of skilled data centre staff, have been put on hold until the future is clear. This delay in recruitment, training and provision of engineers will further slow the development of new capacity.

There are other practical considerations too. In the early days of the Pandemic we had people travelling to sites in Europe and even then, finding hotel accommodation was difficult despite the key worker status our team have purely because most hotels were closed. Those that were open didn’t have any restaurant facilities and even getting there was difficult as taxis were hard to find. These challenges are likely to continue certainly in some countries for many months.

There was a strong need for additional capacity even prior to the Coronavirus pandemic and key players, like Microsoft, were already looking to add capacity before the pandemic. During the lockdown many projects that are in design and preconstruction have continued and at BCS it has been business as usual for this part of our operation as well as our consultancy activity.

For example, we have just completed a fascinating piece of work for a company looking to invest in a significant facility in Asia. Obviously, we had to do the work remotely but were able to provide clear guidance and the project has been given the green light. However, any project management would always be done on site and the quarantine restrictions will likely affect the ability for contractors to complete these projects on time and within budget. This in turn could cause problems around contractual obligations (see factsheet from Conexus Law at www.conexuslaw.com).

In conclusion, in recent years the data centre industry has proven itself to be agile, forward thinking, adaptable and perhaps most of all resilient. So whilst the Covid -19 pandemic is by far the biggest challenge we have faced so far I am confident that we are up to the job.