About 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 the Juntion 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.
| Delivery paths: | 1 |
| Redundancy: | N+1 |
| Floor loading weight: | At least 488kg m^2 |
| Utility voltage: | 230VAC three phase |
| Availability: | 99.8% |
| Downtime before SLA: | 17 hours per annum (never breached!) |
| Hosting floor space: | 1050U of usable rack space over 76 sq metres |
| Floor: | Raised access floor protecting power and network cables |
| Layout: | "Airlock" from main entrance to data area |
| Building amenities: | Car parking, loading bay, toilets, fire escapes, plant room |
| Utility supply: | On-site YEDL substation direct to grid, 3-phase feed to building |
| Footprint: | Up to 32A per rack |
| Backup UPS: | Independent rack UPS protection for servers and core network |
| Backup generators: | On site 100kVA diesel generator |
| Fuel supply: | 12 hours continuous at 100% with fuel supply arrangements |
| Cooling: | 18,000m3 Evaporative Cooler with balanced ventilation / extraction |
| Air handling: | Hot / cold rack isles with sealed 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 callouts |
| Providers: | BT Copper (Sheffield Mosborough) and ntl:Telewest Fibre (Sheffield Chippingham) |
| Core networking: | Redundant Cisco switches, active / passive site edge routers with auto failover |
| Equipment networking: | Gigabit (1000Mbit) to the server, redundant switch ports available |
Location
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 Post Code of the Sheffield Data Centre sites the area as
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.
About the Sheffield Data Centre, specifications and major systems - cooling, network, power, security.