The Sheffield Data Centre
Completed in June 2009 after a 6 month planning and build project, the Sheffield Data Centre is a Tier 2 Data Centre located in Holbrook, Sheffield.
Located less than 8 miles outside Sheffield City Centre, and just over 5 miles from Junction 31 of the M1 motorway, the Sheffield Data Centre provides businesses of all sizes in Sheffield and South Yorkshire high quality, reasonably priced and professionally managed hosting, colocation, and Data Centre services, something felt as not available in Sheffield before June 2009.
The Sheffield Data Centre is owned and run exclusively by High Availability Hosting Limited.
In mid-2012 we leased a second unit in the same business park, due for completion mid-2013 the Sheffield Data Centre Extension (DC1.5) will provide offices, meeting facilities, and room for a further 18 racks. Our Blog contains build pictures and updates.
Data Centre Specification
| Tier: | 2 |
| Delivery paths: | 2 |
| Redundancy: | N+1 |
| Floor loading weight: | At least 488kg m^2 |
| Utility voltage: | 230VAC three phase, 600A |
| Availability: | 99.8% |
| Downtime before SLA: | 17 hours per annum |
Building Specification
| Hosting floor space: | 1932U of rack space in two halls |
| Floor: | Raised access floor in Hall 1, solid concrete in Hall 2 |
| Layout: | "Airlock" from main entrance to data area |
| Building amenities: | Car parking, loading bay (Hall 1), toilets, kitchen / breakout (Hall 2) |
Power Specification
| Utility supply: | On-site YEDL substation direct to grid, 3-phase feed to building |
| Power: | 600A directly connected, additional capacity available |
| Footprint: | Up to 30A per rack |
| Backup UPS: | Independent rack UPS protection for servers and core network |
| Backup generators: | On site 100kVA diesel generator |
| Fuel supply: | 8 hours continuous at 100% with fuel supply arrangements |
Environmental Specification
| Cooling: | Chilled water Evaporative Coolers with balanced ventilation / extraction |
| Air handling: | Hot / cold rack isles with contained hot air extraction |
| Fire detection: | 24x7 off-site monitored smoke / fire detectors |
| Security: | 24x7 off-site monitored Honeywell alarm Paxton Access control throughout building Internal and External off-site monitored CCTV |
| Access: | 24 hour access available (for full/half rack customers) |
| Monitoring: | 24x7 internal and external monitoring of building + infrastructure with automatic out of hours callout |
Network Specification
| Providers: | BT.net Fibre (Sheffield Mosborough) Virgin Media Fibre (Sheffield Chippingham) |
| Core networking: | Redundant Cisco & ZyXEL switches, active / passive site edge routers with HSRP failover |
| Equipment networking: | Cisco access switches, 100Mbit to the server, redundant switch ports available |
Location
The Sheffield Data Centre is located in Holbrook, Sheffield.
Back in late 2008 / early 2009 as part of the initial planning phase, after consultations with Sheffield City Council, the Environment Agency and prospective clients, it was decided to locate the Data Centre out of the City Centre and Don Valley areas - away from the locations affected by the flooding in 2007, but still within the city limits.
The Environment Agency report on the location of the Sheffield Data Centre says the area is not at risk of "Flooding from rivers or sea without defences", and not at risk of "Extent of extreme flood".
The yellow square is where the Sheffield Data Centre is located.