[AusNOG] NextDC Melbourne - Scheduled Power Maintenance -, 15th August

Sat Aug 12 11:57:56 EST 2017

Hi Simon,

Thank you for getting back to the group we appreciate your input :)

We are aware of the legal requirement to complete the checks every 5 years. Generally as we have seen in the industry
thermals are taken of the boards to check for any hot spots which are then  rectified, by a means of a maintenance window.

If the hot spot is behind a breaker or within a breaker then an outage is a requirement to either replace the breaker or tighten
Any loose connections, however if bus bars need to be tightened we have seen many cases of these being completed live using
the appropriate OH&S safety equipment and Safe Work Method Statement.

For sake of clarification, and from what you have explained, NextDC seem to be taking the safe route by de-energising
The boards rather than work on them live. Is this because the design of the boards does not allow enough room for a
safe work space and you deem this an OH&S high risk?

The law component is the actual testing and not the outage itself.

Kind Regards
Shaun McGuane

From: Simon Cooper [mailto:simon.cooper at nextdc.com]
Sent: Friday, 11 August 2017 11:14 PM
To: Shaun McGuane <shaun at rackcentral.com>
Cc: ausnog at lists.ausnog.net
Subject: RE: [AusNOG] NextDC Melbourne - Scheduled Power Maintenance -, 15th August

Hi Shaun,

Happy to clarify, and sorry it's taken me a while to get back to the group.

Under the Electrical Safety Act compliance with AS3000 is mandatory.

Under AS3000, and specifically AS3439, the owner of an electrical system (NEXTDC in this case) is responsible to institute a system of maintenance (aka planned maintenance program).   Through that system the manufacturers recommendations should be addressed as well as the recommendations of AS2467.  It specifically goes on to state that "Doing so will minimise the risk of injury or breakdown and any consequent human suffering and/or loss of supply."

AS2467 suggests that indoor switchgear be examined (examination is more than inspection) at 5 year intervals.  Examination includes ensuring that bus mounts and restraints are adequately torqued.

Typical circuit breakers O&M manual advise that the devices are examined and tested in their 5th year of operation.

Clearly complying to the above is best practice.  Equally, no responsible owner would want to be in the position of having failed to comply, then to have something happen and have to explain how they had made all reasonable efforts to mitigate risk.

In order to comply, both to examine the switchgear and to complete the circuit breaker manufacturer's advice, the switch board needs to be de-energised.   WH&S practises dictate this, as do other parts of AS3000.   There are certain circumstances under which work can be done on or near live boards, and certainly inspection is one of those - but examination is not and neither is testing a circuit breaker.

Not quite as punchy as one of the ten commandments, but fundamentally - it's all based on safety.

Trust that helps.   As mentioned earlier, happy to discuss offline.  Have a great weekend everyone.

Best,
Simon

Simon Cooper
Chief Operating Officer
Direct: +61 7 3177 4721
Mobile: +61 488 235 624
Email: simon.cooper at nextdc.com<mailto:simon.cooper at nextdc.com>

NEXTDC (ASX: NXT)
www.nextdc.com<http://www.nextdc.com>
From: Shaun McGuane [mailto:shaun at rackcentral.com]
Sent: Friday, 11 August 2017 4:58 PM
To: Simon Cooper <simon.cooper at nextdc.com<mailto:simon.cooper at nextdc.com>>
Cc: ausnog at lists.ausnog.net<mailto:ausnog at lists.ausnog.net>
Subject: RE: [AusNOG] NextDC Melbourne - Scheduled Power Maintenance -, 15th August

Hi Simon,

For the sake of clarification and not to question NextDC's position, would you mind sharing with us the
Explanation of the Law that you are referring to with your response from yesterday?

As if you are the only datacentre following this law then others need to follow suite and it would be good
To understand if something is not being done that other providers are legally bound to do.

Kind Regards
Shaun McGuane

From: AusNOG [mailto:ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net] On Behalf Of Jared Hirst
Sent: Friday, 11 August 2017 10:17 AM
To: Mark Newton <newton at atdot.dotat.org<mailto:newton at atdot.dotat.org>>; Nathan Brookfield <nathan.brookfield at simtronic.com.au<mailto:nathan.brookfield at simtronic.com.au>>
Cc: ausnog at lists.ausnog.net<mailto:ausnog at lists.ausnog.net>; ausnog-request at lists.ausnog.net<mailto:ausnog-request at lists.ausnog.net>; Chad Kelly <chad at cpkws.com.au<mailto:chad at cpkws.com.au>>
Subject: Re: [AusNOG] NextDC Melbourne - Scheduled Power Maintenance -, 15th August

Mark,

Totally agree. I would just like to know what law Simon was referring too?

Regards,

Jared Hirst
Servers Australia Pty Ltd
Phone: +61 2 8115 8801
Email: jared.hirst at serversaustralia.com.au<mailto:jared.hirst at serversaustralia.com.au>
________________________________
From: AusNOG <ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net<mailto:ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net>> on behalf of Mark Newton <newton at atdot.dotat.org<mailto:newton at atdot.dotat.org>>
Sent: Friday, August 11, 2017 4:54:10 AM
To: Nathan Brookfield
Cc: ausnog at lists.ausnog.net<mailto:ausnog at lists.ausnog.net>; ausnog-request at lists.ausnog.net<mailto:ausnog-request at lists.ausnog.net>; Chad Kelly
Subject: Re: [AusNOG] NextDC Melbourne - Scheduled Power Maintenance -, 15th August

As someone who has run colo facilities before:

It should be made completely clear during customer onboarding that the facility operator can temporarily shut down a power feed at any time. Advance warning should be desirable but optional.

If there is risk involved in doing that, it's your job to mitigate it. The facility operator doesn't know which bits of equipment in your tenancy are critical, and they've already told you to dual-feed where possible and use a rack-mount ATS for single-corded equipment.

Power work should be done during business hours, because it's almost impossible to get emergency support or source replacement equipment out of hours.

If it isn't safe to take a power feed offline during business hours, then you (the customer) have a design problem to solve.

  - mark

> On Aug 10, 2017, at 6:56 AM, Nathan Brookfield <Nathan.Brookfield at simtronic.com.au<mailto:Nathan.Brookfield at simtronic.com.au>> wrote:
>
> Chad,
>
> That's all well and good but when you're paying a premium price for services of this fashion you expect a certain level of service.  There is a risk no matter what when switching from power supplies taking extra load they would not usually take as well as swing load issues with PDU's.
>
> I completely agree with your sentiment but the risk is not to be ignored especially during those times.
>
> Kindest Regards,
> Nathan Brookfield (VK2NAB)
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: AusNOG [mailto:ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net] On Behalf Of Chad Kelly
> Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2017 2:54 PM
> To: ausnog at lists.ausnog.net<mailto:ausnog at lists.ausnog.net>; ausnog-request at lists.ausnog.net<mailto:ausnog-request at lists.ausnog.net>
> Subject: Re: [AusNOG] NextDC Melbourne - Scheduled Power Maintenance -, 15th August
>
>
>
> On 8/10/2017 10:13 AM, ausnog-request at lists.ausnog.net<mailto:ausnog-request at lists.ausnog.net> wrote:
>> From the latest update today, It appears that most of the works are
>> being postponed for the time being
>>
>> Not all devices within racks support 2 feeds and planning is involved
>> with these devices, which is why it is crucial to receive accurate information about any pending outages or upgrades to the NextDC DataCentres which affect services.
> If these services are mission critical then you really should have duel PSU units, so that when one feed gets taken offline the equipment automatically switches to the other feed. They won't just disconnect both feeds at once because that would be stupid and if the entire DC was offline for too much time then that would put the owners in a rather awkward situation legally, as after say 8 or 10 hours of downtime it wouldn't be good for the owners lets put it that way.
> If the single PSU units are a part of a customers co-located equipment then really your terms of service agreement should exclude liability under your maintenance clauses.
> I don't understand why anyone would be using single PSU equipment in a DC environment now a days when you can buy refurbished servers that come with two PSU as standard even when you buy them without raid.
> Also for anything that is really really mission critical you should have it hosted in multiple datacentres anyway so if something stupid does happen that you can't control you at least still have services online as the load balanced services would just switch.
> Regards Chad.
>
> --
> Chad Kelly
> Manager
> CPK Web Services
> Phone 03 5273 0246
> Web www.cpkws.com.au<http://www.cpkws.com.au>
>
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