We posted a little while ago about the data centre being built to support research computing and storage systems, well since November this site has come on massively!
First, the bad news, due to the snow and poor weather in December and early January, the project is a little behind schedule so we have pushed on our plans to move in to mid May.
But in good news, the exterior walls are mostly complete, the roof is on and the space is watertight. Even the bio-diverse outer roof covering is going down.
In the meantime, our team have been busy preparing to move, we’re making some under-the-cover changes to the way our systems hang together which will allow us to better support the service as we move to running in multiple data centres and to lessen the impact of the move (though physically moving several tonnes of compute and storage kit is always going to be a little disruptive!).
Over the next few months, you might find the number of cores in the BlueBEAR batch compute system varies as we get systems ready for the move though we are about to add 1000 new cores to help mitigate this to some extent.
As the build progresses, we’re in regular contact with our Estates project manager who is done a fine job of keeping us informed and getting the build moving. This week we had samples of the floor finishes to check and are awaiting some mockups of the valve installations for the water cooling systems to check that everything will fit as expected!
Finally, we’ll leave you with some photos … yes its a concrete block building, but its quite exciting for us to finally see it taking shape after a lot of discussion. The second shows the interior of the “white space” data centre with underfloor pipework being prepared for installation.
