On the 2nd of January and 10:15 am the data centre we house the majority of our infrastructure in experienced a complete inbound power outage courtesy of EDF Energy. This was caused by a malfunctioning sub station about 1km away from the site. Our equipment was not affected at all, and we passed through the incident entirely protected by the excellent service at the data centre.
From the release sent out by 4D:
The UPS and generator at Sirius 2 took the load immediately and functioned correctly for the duration of the mains failure.
4D notified EDF immediately of the issue and an engineer was on-site within 10 minutes. Once the faulty substation that was causing the issue was identified, power was re-routed by EDF and Sirius 2 was back on the mains feed by 11:00am.
All backup systems functioned as expected resulting in zero power downtime for our clients. EDF have confirmed we are unlikely to experience any further outages as the issue has been properly identified and contained.
This is especially pleasing to see it working 
The data centre runs a test of the UPS and generator back ups once a week regardless, but to actually see it used in anger and cope without an issue is comforting and we’re very pleased.
4D keep a minimum of 2 days of fuel for the generators on site at all times to handle outages like this. Combined with a mammoth UPS setup as well as running 2 entirely separate internal power grids with dual feeds into each rack, we remain entirely confident that ours and our clients equipment is protected.
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Posted on 8 January 2011
Tags: 4d, data centre, managed hosting, power
About the Author
A joining partner in the Centric IT team, Simon has an impressive background in industry, working in senior IT roles within organisations at the forefront of their sector. Passionate about cost-efficiencies and the provision of effective solutions, Simon is a keen thinker on emerging and cutting edge technologies.
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Thanks for the kind words. Our unofficial motto when it comes to operations in our data centre is “fail to prepare, prepare to fail” which is why we run our generator up once a week and do a full building load test on it every month.
Operational testing is time consuming, but making sure it works regularly not only guarantees our systems function correctly in real-life incidents, but helps the directors sleep a little better at night knowing everything was recently tested and proven to work (as we say in more detail on our website here – http://www.4d-dc.com/why-4d/our-surrey-data-centres-sirius-2/mechanical-and-electrical/).
Thanks again for saying nice things about us. It’s always good to hear positive feedback from our clients.
Laura