Data Centre
South West Communications Group’s tier-4 networked Data Centre, located in its Exeter headquarters, offers a highly resilient infrastructure with no single point of failure. It is built to leading edge standards to provide the “best in class” for security, environment, power, fire prevention and network connectivity, providing scalable solutions for your server hosting, disaster recovery and data backup requirements.
Public access is strictly forbidden. All entrances and common areas are monitored 24 hours a day, seven days a week via closed circuit cameras. There are four separate secure areas, which need to be accessed before reaching the Data Centre cabinet room.
The Data Centre’s fire prevention system has been specifically designed to our exacting requirements and differs from other data centres that employ inert gas and fire suppression type protection. The system constantly monitors each individual cabinet and will detect any electrically induced fault before it has had time to develop into a combustible fire.
Most fire suppression systems when detecting a fire will flood the room with gas and drop the power to the entire site. Our system only isolates the power to the particular cabinet where the electrically induced fault has occurred, therefore protecting the integrity and availability of the rest of the Data Centre equipment.
The power system is totally self-sufficient with all cabinets individually powered with uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) maintaining a smooth and clean supply. In addition, South West Communications Group has a standby power generator capable of supporting the entire facility in the event of an extended power failure and this is able to run indefinitely. The generator is regularly tested every two weeks, to ensure functionality in the event of an emergency and agreements are in place for the continuous supply of fuel.
South West Communications Group also employs a certified networking and security team with years’ of experience to manage and monitor enterprise-level networks. These technicians are trained to the highest possible standards.
The Data Centre has been designed and built with capacity in mind and currently accommodates 120 cabinets (each with 40U of useable space) with the capacity to quadruple the amount of cabinets as demand continues to grow.
The Data Centre infrastructure has been built using:
Connectivity - Direct fibre connections from six telecommunications companies together with connections from two separate BT exchanges give the Data Centre superior connectivity. Diversely routed resilient circuits avoid the possibility of downtime should a contractor mistakenly dig up a connection.
Multiple 100Mbps Internet peering circuits are provided from the north and south of the UK, to provide maximum separation and resilience. These include direct connections to the Internet backbone at Telehouse and Harbour Exchange in London. With 720Gbps of backbone capacity the Data Centre has plenty of available bandwidth.
Firewall protection - Provided by pairs of firewalls, is available to restrict unwanted access to servers and to ensure that if one firewall fails, the other is still active. All ports, except Port 80 (HTTP), are blocked as a default. Alternatively, a raw Internet connection can be provided allowing you to provide your own network security.
Cisco infrastructure - This standards based infrastructure with duplicate components ensures no single point of failure. Cisco serves 80 per cent of Internet connectivity market and is considered “best in breed”.
Cabinet space - Each cabinet measures 600mm wide and 1,000mm deep with 40U of useable space. Rack space can be spread across multiple cabinets to increase resilience.
Resilient power supply - Each cabinet is individually powered and the cabinets themselves are spread across three electrical phases - spreading servers across different cabinets provides users with more power resilience at no extra cost.
For resilience, an N + 3 UPS (4 x UPSs) supports all of the Data Centre’s equipment, and this is backed up by a regularly tested standby power generator. With two power feeds into the building, fed from our own sub-station, adjoining the National Grid’s bulk supply point, the Data Centre has plenty of power capacity.
Fire protection - A sniffer system within each cabinet is used to detect and measure the particles given off when components heat up prior to fire combustion. If particles are detected, the power to that cabinet is automatically turned off therefore preventing the fire from starting as the energy used to fuel it is removed.
Restricted access - This is assured with card swipe entry systems to all restricted, secure areas. Electronic CCTV surveillance is continuously operating both inside and outside of the Data Centre and customers are not allowed in the Data Centre cabinet area, ensuring that no-one can tamper with server equipment.
Workshop area - This is provided for South West Communications Group’s customers that can be used to upgrade server equipment or for general server administration as required.
