The Data Center is an elevated single story building with the main floor raised approximately 17 feet above the surrounding grade level. The Data Center’s “bunker” design is suitable for survivability through the passage of the eye of a hurricane up to Category 5 on the Saffir / Simpson scale, and protects against water incursion of any kind.
The Data Center is located in Fort Jackson, Georgia. The site is far enough inland that storm surge flooding does not need to be a consideration, based on Hurricane Sea, Lake and Overland Surges from Hurricanes (SLOSH) modeling for this site. The site is, however, adjacent to 100-year flood contours based on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) flood map, and frequently experiences minor street flooding during heavy rain events. Therefore, the lowest point is built several feet above the 500-year flood contours provided by the local municipal authority.
The Data Center has a total interior floor space of 4,999 square feet. The 950 square foot office area contains a parts room, an emergency crew rest (sleep) room, and an Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)-compliant unisex bathroom with shower. There is a raised electrical equipment mezzanine of 1100 square feet above the office area. The remaining 4,049 square feet of floor space is configured as computer equipment space.
There are only two entry doors to the Data Center, the main entrance and a fire escape. A raised, enclosed bridge from the second floor of the adjacent building provides access to the main entrance. The main entrance is of the “man trap” type, with electrically interlocked doors where anyone entering the outer door must close it before opening the inside door via card reader, or by a door release from the inside of the facility. The fire exit is located at the opposite end of the building from the main entrance and is equipped with door-mounted and remote audible alarms and contact closures connected to a central monitoring and audible alarm system located in the Network Operations room.
The main security entrance is equipped with a fixed external video camera and another video camera is located between the doors in the “man trap”. The fire exit is also equipped with a fixed camera. All cameras are wired to a video monitor and recording system located in the Network Operations room.
The door between the Network Operations area and the computer room is also equipped with card reader security access providing for access control to the computer equipment room.
The Data Center has its own power feed from the local power company, which is not shared with other buildings on the property. The main power feed, transfer switches, static switches, UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) systems, and all electrical distribution is configured in a split redundant configuration allowing for repair or replacement of any component in each system without interrupting power to the computer systems or their environmental support systems.
The facility also has a dedicated 1250 kW generator. The fuel for this generator is fed from a dedicated 8000-gallon, below-ground tank that provides seven to ten days of run time for the bunker generator at full load. This tank is on the site with the 750 kW generator that provides backup power to the rest of the buildings on the site, providing a total run time of approximately 4 days with both units running.
The facility has dual redundant 225 kVA UPS systems with 30 minutes of valve regulated battery capacity. Battery and Inverter capacity are of an expandable design allowing for removal and replacement of the individual 225 kVA UPS systems with 400 kVA UPS systems and additional battery capacity should it be required in the future.
A reinforced access door is provided at the mezzanine level for this purpose. The electrical distribution is configured for four 20-amp, 110 volt feeds to the majority of the equipment rack spaces. Some telephone, WAN and VAX/Alpha server equipment spaces are configured with specific power feeds in accordance with their manufacturers’ requirements. All rack spaces for equipment are fully wired in advance of the installation of computer processing equipment, allowing for rapid installation and reconfiguration of server racks.
If a power failure occurs:
The UPS units will recognize the loss of commercial power and transfer the loads to their respective battery sets.
The generator will start and synchronize to the UPS systems.
Once the synchronizing has occurred, the automatic transfer switch will move the load to the generator.
The UPS systems will continue to filter the power coming from the generator.
Once power is restored, the UPS will transfer back to commercial power, and the generator will continue to run for ten minutes to verify commercial power stability.
Note: The Hewlett Packard PC monitoring system will inform the computer operators whenever one of the above steps is taken.
See Also:
Power Outage Reporting and Escalation
Cooling for the computer room and control room office area is provided by four, dual redundant, Liebert HVAC (Heating Ventilation & Air Conditioning) systems. These systems are configured for humidification, dehumidification, and heating. Wiring and plumbing for two additional HVAC units, numbers five and six, was installed during the construction process to allow for expedited installation if there is a future need for these units. Only two of these units are needed to supply the entire cooling load for the computer room. The control system for these units automatically brings another unit on line and transmits an alarm to the computer operators if one fails. The electrical equipment mezzanine has dual redundant 20 ton HVAC systems dedicated to the UPS systems. The compressors and condensers for the HVAC systems are located below the building on a dedicated platform elevated three feet above the surrounding grade. Steel grating walls rated for hurricane protection shield these platforms from wind-borne debris.
An Intergen gas flooding fire suppression system protects the entire interior of the Data Center. The 60 thousand cubic feet of gas is stored under the bunker in compressed gas cylinders. The smoke and fire detection system has multiple detectors in multiple zones with lockout and multiple detector triggering. The fire system alarm and control panel is located in the Network Operations room.
See Also:
Fire Panel and Emergency System Support
The Data Center has dual telecommunications service entrances fed from opposite corners of the property into opposite sides of the building. The primary and most critical WAN (Wide Area Network) and voice Telecommunications connection is served by a SONET loop (Synchronous Optical Network) connection to Bellsouth and AT&T that comes to the site from two Bellsouth central offices geographically separated by approximately 14 miles.
The office area space is configured for five workstations. The network and systems monitoring capability provided at these workstations allows the operators to monitor all critical aspects of the data network and computer processing systems. The building systems monitoring and alarm systems are also in this area. These systems allow monitoring of the operational parameters of all critical building systems, both locally and remotely.