Apple Builds its first Data Center in Guizhou, China

Apple Inc on Wednesday (12 Jul 2017) announced that they are going to build its first data center in China, in partnership with a local internet services company, to comply with tougher cyber-security laws introduced last month.

The critical facilities will set up in Guizhou with the help of Guizhou-Cloud Big Data Industry Co. Ltd., and represents a portion of Apple's planned $1 billion investment into the province.

"The addition of this data center will allow us to improve the speed and reliability of our products and services while also complying with newly passed regulations," Apple said in a prepared statement. "These regulations require cloud services be operated by Chinese companies so we're partnering with GCBD to offer iCloud."

In April, China also announced a law requiring businesses transferring over 1,000 gigabytes of data outside China to undergo yearly security reviews, with potential blocks on exporting economic, technological and scientific data.

Apple was quick to note that its data protection protocols, viewed by some as the industry standard, will not be impacted by China's laws. The authorities also said the law is not designed to put foreign firms at a disadvantage and is drafted in reaction to the threat of cyber attacks and terrorism.

"No backdoors will be created into any of our systems," Apple said. The comment seemingly addresses fears that Chinese government agencies might use the cybersecurity law as an invitation to engage in snooping activities.


Earlier this week, Apple said it planned to open a new data center in Denmark. An earlier center in the country, announced in 2015, will come online this year.

Other foreign firms that oversee cloud businesses, including Amazon.com Inc and Microsoft Corp, already have data centers in China.

Strategic Media Asia Limited

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Join the Technical Visit + CPD Course in Electrical Design for Mission Critical Supply

Electrical Design for Mission Critical Supply (2-day)
(10 - 11 August 2017, approved CPD course by CIBSE UK)


Mission critical facilities have particular power requirements that significantly impact how they are designed and operated. You will gain insight into the critical supply system, from power components to distributions and efficiency; from power requirements to sizing, design, testing and commissioning:


-- Concept on primary supply and secondary supply
-- Power flow in mission critical supply system
-- Features of major equipment for critical supply

> Uninterrupted power supply and power storage
> Backup generator
> Automatic transfer switch
> Static transfer switch
> Isolation transformer

-- Efficiency assessment
-- Power quality review
-- Configuration diagram of critical supply (N+1 / 2N) design & analysis
-- Review of cable sizing to incorporate harmonics content
-- Earthing system design
-- Testing and commissioning requirements
-- Brief of Systems Merging Appraisal Test (SMAT)


The sessions detail about the power system components that support typical data centers or mission-critical infrastructure. It prepares individual to fully understand the high voltage systems' design & build by exploring the international best practices and sharing the instructors' experience.

Speakers' Profile - www.stmedia-asia.com/profile


Date: 10 - 11 August 2017 (Thursday - Friday)
Time: 10:00 – 17:30

Venue: Ground Floor, Innocentre, 72 Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong
(Next to the Hong Kong Productivity Council)

Fee: Special rate for CIBSE / HKIE all membership classes
Language: Cantonese (with English Course Materials)

For details, please refer to www.stmedia-asia.com/newsletter_6.html.

Half Day Technical Visit / Showroom Tour

Sponsor - APC by Schneider Electric (www.schneider-electric.com)


Further to the critical facilities design course, a half-day showroom tour is arranged to demonstrate the critical power, cooling facilities and data center management solutions by one of the world’s leading equipment provider. The tour also provides an interactive environment and opportunities for the engineers to exchange professional views on mission-critical facilities with a hands-on and immersive experience.


Date: 25 August 2017 (Friday)
Assembly Time: 15:45 - 16:00
Assembly Point: 11/F, Kerry Centre, 683 King's Road, Quarry Bay, Hong Kong


* Pre-registration required
* Seats are limited. Priority will be given to the CPD course's participants.


Enrollment & Registration

Kindly complete and return an Application Form together with a crossed cheque made payable to “Strategic Media Asia Limited” - Room 403, 4th Floor, Dominion Centre, 43 - 59 Queen's Road East, Hong Kong.


About the Organizer

Strategic Media Asia Limited (SMA) is one of the approved CPD course providers of the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) UK. For details, please visit www.stmedia-asia.com/about.html or http://green-data.blogspot.com (Knowledge Blog).


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Strategic Media Asia Limited
Connecting IT, Facilities and Design

T (852) 2117 3893 | F (852) 2184 9978

Room 403, 4th Floor, Dominion Centre, 43 - 59 Queen's Road East, Hong Kong
http://www.stmedia-asia.com | http://green-data.blogspot.com

(Belt & Road Initiative) China Telecom Global, Daily-Tech and Global Switch to Cooperate for Data Center Worldwide Expansion

China Telecommunications Global Ltd (CTG), Global Switch (one of the leading owners, operators and developers in European and Asia-Pacific for multi-tenant cloud data and carrier neutral data centers) and Daily-Tech Beijing Co Ltd (Daily-Tech), a developer and operator of data center infrastructure across China, have signed a transformative co-operation framework agreement focused on the provision of data center facilities, services and developments worldwide.

The agreement was officially signed in Hong Kong on 25 April 2017 in a ceremony attended by Deng Xiaofeng, Chief Executive Officer of China Telecom Global; Li Qiang, Chief Executive Officer of Daily-Tech; and John Corcoran, Chief Executive Officer of Global Switch. Simon and David Reuben, Directors and long-term core shareholders in Global Switch, were also present at the ceremony, reflecting the importance of the occasion for customers and the wider data center industry.


Global Switch is currently operating 10 data centers in Europe and Asia Pacific (Amsterdam, Frankfurt, London, Madrid, Paris, Hong Kong, Singapore and Sydney) with around 30,000 square meters technical space. The pioneering agreement enables CTG and its partner, Daily-Tech, to draw on Global Switch's developed data centers - capacity, services, development and management expertise - outside China and to ensure the growing number of customer receiving a world-class resilient mission-critical infrastructure during the global markets expansion.


The cooperation also reaffirms a commitment from the 3 leading and experienced businesses to play an important role in delivering China's Belt and Road initiative and to underpin the worldwide expansion of Chinese companies.



About the Blog

Strategic Media Asia (SMA) is one of the approved CPD course providers of the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) UK. The team exists to provide an interactive environment and opportunities for members of ICT industry and facilities' engineers to exchange professional views and experience.

SMA connects IT, Facilities and Design. For details, please visit www.stmedia-asia.com/trainings.html.

Amazon to Build 3 Data Centers in Sweden

Amazon, the world’s leading provider of cloud services, adding more sophisticated services such as database management, analysis or design assistance to mobile applications, said it would build 3 data centers across Sweden, the first in the Nordic region, bringing the number of its cloud storage facilities in Europe to 10. The company on 4 April said in a statement that Amazon Web Services (AWS) would establish the centers in 3 towns, Katrineholm, Vasteras and Eskilstuna, located west of Stockholm.

“For over a decade, we’ve had a large number of Nordic customers building their businesses on AWS,” the head of AWS, Andy Jassy, said in the statement. Jassy said the Nordic region’s most successful startups including game developers, King - the creator of Candy Crush Saga - and Mojang, “depend on AWS to run their businesses, enabling them to be more agile and responsive to their customers.”

In Europe, the Internet giant Amazon already has 3 data centers in Ireland, 2 in Great Britain and 2 in Germany, according to its website. The group announced in September that it planned to open 3 more in France this year.

A Data Center Nightmare: Single Point of Failure (3)

Refer to "A Data Center Nightmare: Single Point of Failure (1) and (2)"


The two examples (1) and (2) mentioned emphasize the importance of several lessons that might seem like common knowledge, but slipped past all parties in the complex design and construction process of the data center.


(I) It is very important to eliminate single points of failure. Had there been dual paths to the critical load and either static switch power-distribution units or rack-mounted static switches, there would have been no data center failure.

(II) It is essential to use conduit and wire instead of busduct. Every electrical connection is a potential failure. The feeder busway system installed had mechanical connectors every 12 feet. Conduit and wire only have connectors at the source and at the load.

(III) Only equipment for mission-critical purpose are allowed in data centers! The installed busway was inherently unreliable because human error led to one failed connection and the two additional failed connections uncovered during testing.

Unfortunately, data center professionals do not necessarily have the chance to test drive a facility before it’s completely operational. At the end of the day, every data center is a unique. Professionals must take all of the right steps to make sure they anticipate future mishaps and learn the lessons of previous experiences.


Five Elements of a Reliable Data Center

Building and designing a data center is a complicated process. The complexity is compounded not only by the building type, but by the fact that each data center is unique, built and designed to meet specific criteria. A successful project depends upon five things:

• Good design with input from the facility executive, builder, designer and commissioning agent
• Good construction, including careful selection of construction firms and subcontractors, as well as effective construction administration and documentation of field issues
• Specification and installation of quality data-center-grade materials
• Effective commissioning
• Thoughtful operational practices and timely maintenance

About the Blog

Strategic Media Asia (SMA) is one of the approved CPD course providers of the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) UK. The team exists to provide an interactive environment and opportunities for members of ICT industry and facilities' engineers to exchange professional views and experience.

SMA connects IT, Facilities and Design. For Data Center Design Consideration, please visit 

(1) Site Selection,
(2) Space Planning,
(3) Cooling,
(4) Redundancy,
(5) Fire Suppression,
(6) Meet Me Rooms,
(7) UPS Selection, and
(8) Raised Floor

All topics focus on key components and provide technical advice and recommendations for designing a data center and critical facilities.

A Data Center Nightmare: Single Point of Failure (2)

Refer to "A Data Center Nightmare: Single Point of Failure (1)"


Data center failures can be rooted in several sources - design, construction, maintenance, quality of material, quality of equipment, commissioning and direct human intervention. For the most part, data centers, even ones that fail, have the benefits of good design practice and intention, professional construction oversight, and high-quality craftsmanship. They are maintained according to data center quality guidelines. But a single overlooked mistake can quickly become significant issues - power and air conditioning failure - that can bring down a data center.

Another story is a high-profile government data center, with a busduct-panelboard connection exploded, effectively shutting off power to approximately 15,000 square feet of the most critical computing in the facility.

In this incident, the design relied on an isolated redundant uninterruptible power supply (UPS) back-up. When a UPS system failed, a static automatic transfer switch was to shift to the already-operating isolated redundant UPS and transfer the load within a quarter cycle. The system worked well and the client was satisfied with the transfer scheme and the rotary concept.


Source of the Problem


Where this system failed was downstream from the automatic transfer switch. Each of the switches fed one busduct riser and terminated directly into a main distribution panel located on each floor of the facility - one busduct per panel. A single fault on any busduct or main distribution panel compromised the critical load.

As it occurred, the electrical connection between the busduct and the distribution panelboard failed and the load was lost. A single point of failure succeeded in bringing down the floor. Not until the facility’s electricians ran jumper cables from one of the intact risers and back-fed the main distribution panel did the floor have power.

Why did this failure occur? The building had been designed in tight coordination between the government representative and the designer; the entire system had been commissioned and had been running with tight oversight for more than two years. What happened?

The cause of the problem was the failure of a manufactured busduct connector, one of hundreds in the building. The connector joined lengths of feeder busduct via a sliding piece - designed to slide approximately one-quarter of an inch to make installation easier - and a break-away torque bolt designed to ensure that the installer did not over-torque the bolt.

Although the investigation team was not asked to explain exactly why the joint exploded, it determined that the quarter-inch of play designed into the connector had actually allowed for a portion of uninsulated section of the copper busduct to be exposed to the atmosphere without insulation. The team surmised that the perfect combination of air borne dust, humidity and possibly other contaminants led to an arc that became a fault and exploded.

During the analysis, the investigation team isolated each busduct riser from the static automatic transfer switch at the source and from the main distribution panel at the termination. During the megger test, the electrical forensic team discovered two additional joints that didn’t pass, clearly more candidates for potential failure. Not only did the joints not pass the megger test, two of them visibly and audibly arced while the voltage was ramped up during the testing. The joints had shown themselves to be the weak link in the system. The installed busduct technology was vulnerable to catastrophic failure.



Continue - A Data Center Nightmare: Single Point of Failure (3)

About the Blog

Strategic Media Asia (SMA) is one of the approved CPD course providers of the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) UK. The team exists to provide an interactive environment and opportunities for members of ICT industry and facilities' engineers to exchange professional views and experience.

SMA connects IT, Facilities and Design. For Data Center Design Consideration, please visit 

(1) Site Selection,
(2) Space Planning,
(3) Cooling,
(4) Redundancy,
(5) Fire Suppression,
(6) Meet Me Rooms,
(7) UPS Selection, and
(8) Raised Floor

All topics focus on key components and provide technical advice and recommendations for designing a data center and critical facilities.

A Data Center Nightmare: Single Point of Failure (1)

Every facility executive responsible for data centers can tell at least one nightmare scenario. Some are from direct personal experience; others are data center legends. All these stories show how hard it is to prevent data centers from failing. Every data center is unique. Every design is a custom solution based on the experience of the engineer and the facility executive.

An example comes from the colocation business which is made up of real estate companies that offer tenants space, not in office buildings, but in data centers. The occupants are servers, not people. The data center real estate company brands its services based upon a promise to deliver non-stop climate control and power reliability. One moment without cooling or power harms not only the tenant, which stands to lose revenue as a result of down time and recovery time, but also the colocation company’s business model (with SLA, Service Level Agreement).

A construction error that exposed a design miscalculation and a commissioning flaw can result in losing a data center. One nightmare scenario is that cabling between the generators and the paralleling gear had been damaged during construction. While being pulled through the conduits, the cable insulation had been nicked and scraped. The damage was not enough to be detected by normal meggering — a test of the resistivity of insulation — but enough to create a weak link in the mission critical power chain.

If all things are correct, the loss of a cable should not be an issue. The design engineer had foreseen the potential for generator system failure and had designed paralleling gear with the programmable logic controller (PLC) programmed to handle this fault. When the fault occurred, the PLC began shutting down the entire generator bank. With the system experiencing a cascading failure, the PLC was unable to intervene.

When the shutdown event was complete and the paralleling switchgear was cold, the entire site transferred to the battery. Within the design time of 15 minutes, the batteries were depleted and all customers were left without the service of their computers. The data center had failed and the colocation company’s branding promise had been seriously compromised.

Why did this happen? Was it a construction error? A commissioning oversight? Could this be pinned to the owner’s design manager, the one who devised the paralleling scheme from the beginning? How about the engineering design team?

There were multiple causes for the failure. In this instance, a construction craftsmanship issue revealed a design shortfall.


Source of the Problem


It is clear that even more rigorous testing before commissioning was needed. Additionally, this failure indicated that the PLC had not been programmed correctly to clear this fault condition and thus had not been commissioned with this fault scenario. And this sequence should have been part of the preventive maintenance program — a change that was made following the disaster.

The design/commissioning team had not anticipated the exact failure sequence. This project would have benefited from more involvement during the design phase from a commissioning agent with specific experience in PLC programming. Additionally, a third-party reviewer with topical design and operating experience would have added value if brought into the design process.

Every data center is one of a kind. The better the commissioning team can simulate real-life scenarios, the more reliable the data center will be.



Continue - A Data Center Nightmare: Single Point of Failure (2)

About the Blog

Strategic Media Asia (SMA) is one of the approved CPD course providers of the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) UK. The team exists to provide an interactive environment and opportunities for members of ICT industry and facilities' engineers to exchange professional views and experience.

SMA connects IT, Facilities and Design. For Data Center Design Consideration, please visit 

(1) Site Selection,
(2) Space Planning,
(3) Cooling,
(4) Redundancy,
(5) Fire Suppression,
(6) Meet Me Rooms,
(7) UPS Selection, and
(8) Raised Floor

All topics focus on key components and provide technical advice and recommendations for designing a data center and critical facilities.

The Latest Guide Targets Data Center Metering and Energy Use

Developed by the U.S. Department of Energy, the new guide is designed to implement a metering system for data centers. The metering system enables organizations to gather necessary data for effective decision-making and energy-efficiency improvements. The guide’s focus is on the necessary data calculating the power-usage effectiveness (PUE) metric.

Please download the whole guide from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy:

https://datacenters.lbl.gov/resources/data-center-metering-and-resource-guide

About the Blog

Strategic Media Asia (SMA) is one of the approved CPD course providers of the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) UK. The team exists to provide an interactive environment and opportunities for members of ICT industry and facilities' engineers to exchange professional views and experience.

SMA connects IT, Facilities and Design. For Data Center Design Consideration, please visit 

(1) Site Selection,
(2) Space Planning,
(3) Cooling,
(4) Redundancy,
(5) Fire Suppression,
(6) Meet Me Rooms,
(7) UPS Selection, and
(8) Raised Floor

All topics focus on key components and provide technical advice and recommendations for designing a data center and critical facilities.

Accreditation

We are pleased to announce that our Approved CPD Course Provider status granted by CIBSE has been updated and further renewed to 2019 since 2015.

Further to the professional members of data center industries, the approved courses


- Data Center Facilities Design and Infrastructure Engineering
- Electrical Design for Mission Critical Supply
- Air Conditioning System Design for Data Center


are designed for building services engineers and facilities management team who exchange professional view and experience on critical infrastructure and data center services during the courses.

The team exits to connect IT, Facilities and Design.
For details, please visit www.stmedia-asia.com.

Data Center Design with Building Information Modeling (BIM)

   

Data center design involves a lot of timing of schedules, organization, tracking of materials and changes, etc. with complex design teamwork and coordination. For this reason, the process of Building Information Modeling (BIM) is introduced to facilitate and streamline data center project designs:

Better project coordination

BIM allows everyone - architects, electrical and mechanical engineers, project managers, etc. - involved in the project to input their data into the shared model. Information is kept in one place, which helps with communication and project coordination. 

Faster fault detection and assessing problems

Using 3D computer models allows the project team to detect and evaluate errors or fault easily that could cause an issue during construction. Your mission-critical building is shown in scale, and you are able to enter manufacturer details / data into a 3D model, visualizing the whole project and important issues during the design.

Deeper design preparation with improved management

Data centers is designed for large amounts of IT equipment supported by critical facilities (MEP - mechanical, electrical, plumbing equipment). All of these equipment & facilities have high power consumption. They must be fit properly, have proper distribution and suit certain service clearances. The routing of BIM allows electrical & mechanical (EM) designers and structured cabling system designers ( for optical fiber, high voltage / low voltage cables, etc.) to know exactly where to model for heat dissipation and adjust for any electrical duct work, and allows engineers to adjust for proper air flow.

For the raised-floor, it can be especially tricky. Most floor installers do not model their installations — adjustments for structural bridging and support are typically made in the field. Creating a BIM model of the flooring allows the installer to understand where the MEP systems are located in relationship to the pedestal support systems.Flooring installers can see where they need to modify their support framing early in the process and fabricate the necessary bridging and support components to span across the MEP systems where necessary. This eliminates the time and effort it would take to do this in the field once the MEP systems are installed, thus decreasing the field installation time.

By incorporating computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulations into the BIM model, engineers can evaluate and fine tune server layouts based on the thermal modeling. You’re able to visualize how the air will flow inside the data center and see the temperature variation based on the height and how the air is moving. It’s especially helpful in being able to see how the servers in a computer room receive cold air and how hot air is removed (hot aisle & cold aisle).

Smoother commissioning and operations & maintenance (O&M) tasks

Data centers require a series of precise commissioning process to ensure performance and reliability. Commissioning information tags for each piece of equipment and feeder can be added to the BIM model to keep a live database of commissioning process status. These information are so valuable to the operational staff, such as submittals, O&M manuals, as-built plans, balancing reports and commissioning reports. When this information is inserted into the BIM database, the information can be retained and viewed for each piece of equipment, rather than in separate volumes. Data center operators would benefit from a comprehensive set of information.

Source: BICSI - BIM in Data Center Design (www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3ExZq-3iMA)

About us

Strategic Media Asia (SMA) is one of the approved CPD course providers of the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) UK. The team exits to provide an interactive environment and opportunities for members of ICT industry and facilities' engineers to exchange professional views and experience.

SMA connects IT, Facilities and Design. For the Data Center Consideration Series, please visit 

(1) Site Selection,
(2) Space Planning,
(3) Cooling,
(4) Redundancy,
(5) Fire Suppression,
(6) Meet Me Rooms,
(7) UPS Selection, and
(8) Raised Floor

All topics focus on key components and provide technical advices and recommendations for designing a data center and critical facilities.