Data Centre
South West Communications Group’s industry leading Data Centre is located in Exeter. It 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 and is maintained by a certified networking and security team with years of experience managing and monitoring enterprise-level networks. All these elements combine to provide scalable solutions for all your server hosting, disaster recovery and data backup requirements.
Our Data Centre services include:-
Connectivity - Our Data Centre’s superior connectivity is achieved via direct fibre connections from six telecommunications companies together with connections to two separate BT exchanges. Diversely routed resilient circuits avoid further possibility of downtime. Multiple Internet peering circuits from the north and south of the UK provide maximum separation and resilience, including direct connections to the Internet backbone of Telehouse and Harbour Exchange in the Docklands, London and MaNAP in Manchester.
Cisco standards-based infrastructure - Duplicate components ensure there is no single point of failure. Cisco serves 80% of the Internet connectivity market and is considered “best of breed”.
Firewall protection - Pairs of firewalls are available to restrict unwanted access to servers and to ensure that if one firewall fails, the other is still active. Alternatively, a raw Internet connection can be provided allowing you to provide your own network security.
Resilient power supply - Resilient power is provided to every individual cabinet and the cabinets are spread across all three electrical phases. Servers are also spread across different cabinets to gain additional power resilience.
An N + 2 UPS system (4 x UPSs) supports all of the Data Centre’s equipment for resilience and this is backed up by a regularly tested standby power generator. With two power feeds into the building from our own sub station (which adjoins the National Grid’s bulk supply point), the Data Centre has plenty of power capacity.
Restricted access - Privacy and security is assured with card swipe entry systems to all restricted areas. Electronic CCTV surveillance is continuously operating both inside and outside of the Data Centre. Public access is strictly forbidden and there are four separate secure areas, which need to be accessed before reaching the Data Centre cabinet room.
Fire protection - Protection is provided to each cabinet via individual fire detection systems. Our 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 electrical induced fault before it has had time to develop into a combustible fire. Most fire suppression systems will flood the room with gas and drop the power to the entire site. Our system will only drop the power to the particular cabinet where the electrically induced fault occurred therefore is protecting the integrity and availability of the rest of the Data Centre’s equipment.
Cabinet space - Our cabinet space measures 600mm wide and 1,000mm deep with 40U of useable space. Rack space can be spread across multiple cabinets to increase resilience. The Data Centre currently accommodates 120 cabinets with the capacity to quadruple the amount of cabinets as demand continues to grow.
Workshop area - This is provided for our customers’ use where servers can be upgraded using a unique customer login facility for access to each server via a KVM service
