The Liberty Center One facility was originally built as a light industrial site. It functioned for years as a tool and die shop which provides a solid foundation for some of the heavy duty equipment that we deploy in the electrical infrastructure – our dual UPS system, step down transformers, paralleling switch gear and transfer switches. The solid block construction also contributes the building’s overall integrity. Data centers require a tremendous amount of space for supporting equipment and one of our goals is to be extremely efficient with the space we have while maintaining a fit and trim appearance. Each of our 30 ton Liebert Computer Room Air Conditioners (fondly known as CRACs) require a corresponding condenser unit with heavy duty fans which are placed on the roof of the data center. So when we started on our journey to remodel and expand our second data room floor, it was very important to us to make certain that the roof over our new floor was sufficiently sturdy to support any new equipment we might add over time. We would only have one chance to make any adjustments and we wanted to get this right. Our structural engineers determined that additional support was needed and we proceeding with a plan to reinforce the roof with a supporting beam and floor mounted posts.The first step was to prepare the floor for the supporting posts. We saw cut the existing concrete floor and excavated the soil below.

Support pole opening ready for cement

After the cement and soils were excavated, a new fill of concrete was dropped in to form the base of the new posts.

First layer of cement poured for support beam post

A new layer of cement was poured and the posts were set and we were ready for the beam to go up.

One section of steel being lifted in place for the roof support system

Using a lift system including a forklift, the supporting beams were lifted to the ceiling.

Beam is lifted in place ready for welders

Once the beam was put in place, a welding team came in on scissors lift to ensure that the beam was welded to the roof deck and to the supporting posts in multiple places.

Roof support beam welded to main building support structure

And a new supporting beam was now in place. More importantly we completed all of this work in the new room without any potential risk the existing data room. All debris and construction materials were contained in the new room as it was sealed off from the rest of the facility during construction. The result is a feeling of confidence that we and our customers will have, knowing that their valuable hardware is safe and secure.

It’s not glamorous and certainly has little to do with IT services, but it’s all in a day’s work at Liberty Center One.

One of the main factors considered by the design team was how we could re-purpose excess power and HVAC resources that were going unused in the active data room. When we planned out the facility 5 years ago, we anticipated that customers would demand rack environments that could support high power densities. And while we have had some customers deploying as much as 19 kW in a single rack, the majority of our customers have had more modest power requirements. The end result is that while the overall engineering plan for our first data room projected that we would need eight 30 ton Computer Room Air Conditioners (CRACs) to cool the room at full capacity, the reality is that with 85% – 90% of the floor capacity used, we are only running three to four total CRACs even at times in the summer when outdoor heat reached critical levels. So our engineering team came up with a plan to re-direct cooling from the active data room to the new data room. We would knock out penetrations at the top and bottom of the common wall separating the two rooms and assemble both cold air ducting and hot air returns to the CRAC units located on the other side of the common wall. As illustrated below three cold air feeds were constructed to supply air to a common overhead plenum. One of the most important parts of the project was making sure that no contanimation from construction debris passed into the active data room. Great care was taken in sealing the areas where the dry wall was to be cut and the active data room was pressurized using the existing exhaust fan systems so that any potential debris was sucked into the new data room.

Wall area was sealed with visqueen before the openings were cut into the wall for hot air returns to the CRACs in data room A.

One feature that allowed us to accomplish our objective was that our Liebert CRAC units were constructed in a manner that allowed us to put the hot air return on either side of the unit. All we had to do was move the hot air returns that were facing into the active data room so that they pointed towards the common wall.

A look at the back of a CRAC – our units could be fitted for hot air return on either side

Large sleeves were fabricated that were connected to the rear of the CRAC units and then fitted into wall penetrations to face into the new data room.

This sleeve will connect one of the CRAC units in and serve as the hot air return for B.

Ultimately, the penetrations were all completed without any disturbance or issues with the active data room. The supply ducts are air-tight and will supply enough air for our intial deployment of approximately 60 racks in the new space. As we grow, the plenum will already be installed throughout the room and we will just need to aid more air handling capacity to meet capacity.

The plenum for Data Room B will be fed by CRACs in A through these cold air supplies

You have heard us talk about our expansion plans and we are pleased to inform you that we will be swinging hammers very soon.

In the very near future, we are starting on this expansion project which will more than double the floor capacity at Liberty. This expansion will take advantage of our ability to re-deploy untapped power and cooling assets from Data Room A to start services in Data Room B. Essentially, we have two completely dormant PDUs in Data Room A which can be used to populate approximately 60 racks. Complementing this untapped power is some untapped cooling in Data Room A. We initially installed nine (9) 30 ton CRACs (Computer Room Air Conditioners) in Data Room A and projected that if we were to populate the room fully, we could need 8 running units plus a spare. Today, we are approximately 90% full in Data Room A and at the height of the summer heat we were only running 4 of the 9 units. We have calculated that we can eliminate three units in Data Room A and still have abundant cooling capacity for the room with redundancy.

With these factors in mind, here is a high level review of the build-out plan.

• Data Room B will be expanded by the elimination of the hallway which presently leads back to the west loading dock. The west loading dock will be maintained but the size of the receiving area will be reduced.
• A new partition wall will be erected directly adjacent to the entrance to Data Room A to block off the hallway.
• The present man trap will be modified to include a third door which will provide access to Data Room B.
• The door that now leads to the generator yard will be moved east and will become an emergency exit door from the common hallway area.
• A new door will be installed in the electrical room, providing us with private access to the generator yard.
• The three air conditioning units that are on the common wall between the two data rooms will be re-vented so that they become the air supply units for Data Room B.
• We will be using un-tapped electrical services that are presently in Data Room A for Data Room B. Thus, new electrical conduit will be run from Data Room A into Data Room B.
• The new room will be completely outfitted with a single overhead plenum and will be pre-plumbed for additional air handling units.
• We will be using the Universal Electric Starline Busway Power Distribution System throughout Data Room B as we do in the north end of Data Room A.

The construction project will be accomplished in phases so that we maintain the overall security of the site and minimize any contamination of the remainder of the building from construction debris and dust.

We are planning for a completion date of November 1, 2012, pending city inspections and approvals.

If you would like to take a look at the new floor plan, we invite you to stop by and we’ll be happy to talk to you about the overall site plan. And as construction progresses will be providing you with updates.

I have several stacks of paper in front of me.

In one stack is a series of documents that we are using to do an analysis of the current and potential building electrical load we have today. One document is one we create every month called our power audit. We use it to track circuit loads and to make sure our customers are within the safe zone of their circuits. It also gives us a comparison between actual usage and demand availability. A very important measurement – electrical demands vary as server loads change, so sometimes a usage figure at 8 am might be considerably different at noon or midnight. We need to ensure that we can support the full load. Another set of documents is analysis drawn from our dual UPS units, tracking their utilization. Yet another set of documents in this stack is a tracking of our DTE bills over the past 12-18 months. And the last piece of the puzzle in this stack is a roster of our customers and the layout of their circuits against the PDUs and distribution systems in the data room.

The second stack has been prepared to look at several projections of load expansion in data room A and a guesstimate of what the power usage might be in the new data room at varying room sizes and occupancy rates. And we use the term guesstimate loosely. The lightening like speed of technology changes coupled with the structural changes that businesses large and small are making in the economy today make it a challenge for us to predict the future. As a commercial facility, we don’t control what goes in – we are customer driven so we have to establish an infrastructure that gives us the ability to be flexible enough to keep up with our customers. So, we created a number of “what if” scenarios — what if our customer mix changed to be more storage oriented; what if we attracted more higher bandwidth customers with less electrical demand; what if we were to see more customers with smaller rack sizes vs. fewer customers with larger number of racks.

And the third stack generated by our engineering and design consultants, Integrated Design Solutions (IDS), is a combination of alternative approaches to our expansion and build out including 7 site plans and associated budgets for architectural build out, electrical system and environmental systems build-out and upgrades. The budgets themselves each have multiple layers of detail on each plan, so yes, we could keep our printers busy for a while if we printed everything off.

The team from IDS did a terrific job putting these various plans into dimensional drawings that clearly communicate differing visions of what Liberty could become. A few of the ideas were completely out of the box and challenged our thinking on how we were defining the spaces within the building.

And with all this material at our disposal and with the staggering amount of data and the equally staggering amount of choices, dare I use a three letter word to describe the task at hand?

Fun.

Yes, this is the fun part. Considering the future. Anticipating customer needs. Planning a path forward that couples sustainable design, redundant system architecture, flexible delivery and expansion at a cost structure that can be supported by an underlying business structure. And throughout the process, ensure the continuing of services to our existing customers through the entire expansion process.

One interesting concept that surfaced several times through our research is the idea of hot aisle containment. We are using cold aisle containment today to increase air flow to the front of our racks and improve our cooling efficiency. But we’ve also seen some use of hot aisle containment where the aisles in the backs of the servers are closed off with exhaust systems. Temperatures in the hot aisle can rise to 100 degrees, but it is exhausted and actually increases the total efficiency of the room. Here’s an interesting webinar on the topic: http://www.42u.com/webinars/hot-aisle-vs-cold-aisle-containment.htm

We’d like to hear from you if you have experienced any data rooms or facilities with hot aisle containment systems and if you have any feedback on them. Thanks for your paritipation!

We met last Friday with our team at Integrated Design Solutions (ids) and spent several quality hours with their team discussing topics from room dimensions to electrical load projections and everything in between. Lots of great ideas and analysis and we’ll be sharing some of it with you shortly, but one thing that just blew me away was an alternative they present for our flooring. Now flooring is just one of those things taken for granted in the data center. Most everyone is used to seeing the standard white vinyl tile in data room spaces, but those of you who have visited Liberty know that we installed a black rubber floor (affectionately known as flubber). We like it not just because it’s different and not just because it’s a “green” material (it’s made out of recylced tires), and not just because it’s also anti-static, but for some of the other bonus features it offers. It provides more cushion than just standing on a cement base floor, which is the effect you get standing on vinyl tile and, most importantly, it shows the dirt – so if we’ve had a significant amount of traffic, we’ll see it and can clean it up. Seeing dirt on a white floor is almost impossible, so having a black floor helps immensely. Well, the team from ids isn’t about just perpetuating the status quo unless it makes sense, so they are looking at everything and one item happened to be the flooring. So, they described an option for us that just seemed a “little out there” — carpeting for the data room. No, not berber or shag, but  Static Dissipative Carpet Tile, as alternative to our flubber. We discussed the pros and cons, and like just about everything, there were some negatives – like the risk of loose carpet fibers getting caught up in cooling fans. But we found it interesting that it comes recommended for data floor installations (kind or like a family room for your servers).

Leads us to wonder — have you ever run into a carpeted data room? If you have, drop us a line, we’d like to hear about your impressions. Or if you have any opinions about this material, take a minute to comment on that too.

Welcome to the Liberty Center One blog. We hope you will look in frequently and participate in the conversation as we take the next step in our plans to expand out into our second room (affectionately known as Data Room B).

Four years ago, Liberty Center One looked like this:.

 And from these beginnings we transformed the building to look like:

And now it’s time to transform the facility again.

We’ve been thinking about this step for some time now. As many new customers have been choosing Liberty Center One to provide them with a High Availability, High Density infrastructure we have reached the point that the first room – Data Room A – is almost full and we need to light up the second room.

Five years ago when we initiated the process to build Liberty Center One, we took account of all of our experiences as a primary customer of data center services – good and bad – to help us plan out what we wanted in a data center. We toured over 20 different types of facilities – from other commercial centers to enterprise run data rooms and observed good practices and questionable practices. We pulled in requirements from some of the leading manufacturing companies in the region to make sure we were compliant with their needs.

Three years later, we have compiled lessons learned from our own experience operating LCO day to day – things that we did that we really liked and others that we would have done differently.

As we take the next step, we’d like to invite you to participate. We’re just starting down the road to design out our expansion plan and we’ll have plenty to talk about…and plenty of items where we’d like your feedback. Our goal is to be our customers’ most valued and dependable IT partner. A resource that our customers can count on to provide them with rock solid support. We hope that you will participate and that we will all learn and improve at the same time. Feel free to post here and we’ll start the dialogue!

What is HA/HD you may ask.

It’s our way of describing two of Liberty’s most important attributes.

HA = High Availability. We’ve built redundant systems to ensure that our customers enjoy a resilient environment that can withstand power outages, carrier outages, hardware failures, and other types of problems that could potentially take a data center down.

Our original facility design had us using one huge generator per data room. And while having back-up generator capacity is extremely important, it’s more important that your back-up generator starts every time you need it. Take the case of 365 Main, a data center in San Francisco that hosted for CraigsList, Technocrati, Yelp and others. In 2007, their generators failed to start during a Pacific Gas & Electric power outage and they and their customers were down for several hours. The cause? The generators didn’t start. See the article here: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2007/07/24/generator-failures-caused-365-main-outage/

So, we said, let’s not trust the availability of power to our customers to a starter on a single generator, so we decided to bring two in. So we mitigate the risk of a starter failure by having two – and one generator by itself can support the entire facility. By the way, if you weren’t around when we did bring in the generators, here’s a photo you might like:

Yes, that is a flying generator.

And having the back-up generator plant is only part of the story. What’s the benefit of having redundancy if it’s not maintained? Pat Turner, our CTO spent the better part of last week working on our semi-annual electrical systems maintenance and part of that maintenance was to use our own load bank to perform the National Fire Prevention Association schedule used by hospitals and other high availability entities to ensure that not only will the generators start, but that they will support load. And because we have our own load bank, we perform this test whenever we want, not just when we have the budget.

HD stands for High Density. It was important for us to be in a position to say yes to customers, not no. We had heard “no” a lot when we asked to get more power in our racks at other hosting facilities over the years.  Many leading commercial facilities across the country only allow a customer to put 4 kW in a rack. So what do they do with a customer with a blade enclosure that’s only 21u deep and draws 8 or 9 kW? They charge them for more space – more than they need. We don’t like charging for vapor, we’d prefer to provide value, so we built an environmental infrastructure that can support more – a lot more. In fact, we have one customer running 19 kW in a single rack.

Now not everyone is ready for high density computing today, so as we go forward with Data Room B we are looking at our past experience and comparing that to future projections of where IT delivery systems. Predicting the future is part art and part science and we’re going to take our best shot. Perhaps you can help. If you haven’t virtualized your environment yet, do you plan to do so? Tell us more about where you think you’re heading – fewer, more powerful servers? What would lead you to downsize your hardware but to increase your hardware investment? We’re interested in your input, anytime.

Liberty Center One was projected to have two data rooms, both of about the same size.

When we bought the building the space designated for the data rooms was a 8,000 square foot, high ceiling warehouse. But, we knew that lighting the total footprint would create major inefficiencies and would also inhibit our ability to make building changes down the road with active production customers in the space. So we built out half the room and left the other half until later.

Well, later is now, and while we have the shell of the room ready to go, we’ve charged our architects with the task of looking at the space with a fresh pair of eyes. We’re very excited to see what ideas they have.

The space today looks like this….

By the way — looks like we’re going to have to re-locate our “stuff!” One thing we realized is that we have an excess inventory of open racks. Anyone want to buy some?