fixed wire testing

[ohareka70]

Hello,

I am a Datacentre Manager for a company with 21 racks (3 rows of 7). An external company has a contract to look after and do all the PAT testing and Fixed Wire Testing in out company buildings and want to do fixed wire testing in the DC.

I would prefer not to go ahead with this as they say they need to shut down the power to each rack.  Last time it was tested was 3 years ago when it was first built.

Is their a legal requirement to comply with this?

Or how often is this a requirement/

regards,

Kevin

[Leo Laohoo]

I would prefer not to go ahead with this as they say they need to shut down the power to each rack.

Sorry but I'm from Australia.  What do you mean by "fixed wire"?  I mean if you want to test the copper ethernet cable then you can run TDR (if your switch supports this feature).  This function can be disruptive if the interface is running GigabitEthernet.

Testing of fibre uses OTDR and you need a special machine to do this and this can be very disruptive.

Or how often is this a requirement

Depends on how much trust you have on the people who did the cabling.  I mean in Australia government standard, cables are suppose to be tested using Fluke DTX-1800 testers.  I have seen copper cable fail even though the cablers have marked them as "Pass". 

If you run a DC then I'd be looking forward to get the cables tested every three years.

[ohareka70]

Its the electrical sockets that go into the ground where the UPS plugs into.  Thats what they want to test.  They also want to test anything off the circuit boards outside which is a worry as the cooling for the racks (water cooled racks) are powered off these circuit boards.  They say they cant test each UPS socket without it being disconnected which in theory means a shutdown of each rack.

[ohareka70]

Its the Commando sockets in the Datacentre they want to test - but this would mean an outage on each rack.

Do these need testing in a DC? If so how often does it need done.

They also want to test anything coming off the circuit board to the DC? Ie aircons would be affected.

[Leo Laohoo · Accepted solution]

Right, I see what you mean.

We have three DC and we completely power down each DC twice annually.  The DC guys do alot of maintenance and upgrade because people keep adding racks of servers and services.  During the DC shutdown we keep ramping up the power requirements as well as rerun electrical cables back and forth.

Also during the time, the DC guys would regularly test all the power outlets including the UPS and the generators.

Does this answer your question?

[ohareka70]

Yeah i think so.  We built the DC in 2009 and have never done a complete shutdown since.  So maybe it would be a good idea to do a shutdown once a year and let the electrical company do their testing on all the power outlets.  We already test the generator 4 times per year on full load.

It looks as if it also might be a legal requirement to do this full electrical test once a year anyway.

thanks

Kevin

[Leo Laohoo]

Yeah i think so. We built the DC in 2009 and have never done a complete shutdown since.

Firstly, thanks for the ratings. We are lucky because we own the DC sites and we can "do whatever we please", so to speak.

But you're in a difficult bind, some companies have a so-called "DR" but they don't want to activate it because mostly it's poorly planned. But unless you have it down in your contract that you will plan to do a DC shutdown to do maintenance, I'm afraid you won't be "allowed" by your clients.

However, as a client, if I know you do regular DC shutdown then I am forced to implement something with robust DR.

My previous work, my client has two DC and they are deemed "DR", however, they only do paper exercises in failover. One of the main reasons they don't want to turn the power off is because of the state of the very old servers (some still running Novel 1 and Windows 3.11).

Any line managers who question about the real state of the DR will suddenly find themselves sent to Christmas Island and made to count the actual amount of red crabs during the annual migration.