Awarded

Bay Datacentre Modernisation Works

Descriptions

In 2013, Swansea University as part of the High Performance Computing Wales project received a Fujitsu Super Computer. Due to the high density nature of the equipment and uncertainties around timescales of the new Bay campus it was decided that a 3rd party datacentre was needed to accommodate it. After evaluating several different options, a new build water-cooled data centre at the Dylan Thomas Centre (DTC) was chosen as the best solution. The work was undertaken by 2BM and completed in Dec 2012.In 2018, Swansea University as part of the Super Computing Wales (SCW) project received an Atos/Dell supercomputer as a replacement for the original Fujitsu system. SCW is part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the Welsh Government. This resulted in the decommissioning of the 12 racks of Fujitsu equipment by Swansea University staff and installation of 5 racks of Atos/Dell equipment by Alces Software. Layout/power of the current equipment can be found in Appendices A and G. The current active cabinets are labelled as cab 1,2,5,6, and 7 in Appendix G. Current power requirement of this system is just under 100 kW.Due to the ownership of the Dylan Thomas Centre changing and several operating issues being identified, it has been decided that Swansea University would like to relocate the Super Computing Wales equipment to the Bay Data centre. Cooling at this datacentre is currently inadequate to house high density systems and will need to be upgraded.Engineering are in the process of procuring a new super computer as part of the IMPACT operation that is part funded by ERDF through the Welsh Government. The super computer are also high density systems that would need to be housed at the Bay data centre once the cooling is upgraded. The system is expected to require 2 x cabinets fed by 6 x Single phase PDUs, each with 7x C19 sockets.Information Services and Systems (ISS) have 1 rack that needs to be moved to a high density rack. This houses a Dell VX Rail system and can run at up to 12.5 kW. There are currently 4 x 32Amp PDUs each with 6 x C19 sockets.Further information is available within the technical specification documents.