Case Studies 

Intercea: Data Centre

Leading Pharmaceutical Company: Network Core Switches

Intercea: Data Centre 

Ponte Comm has completed two major projects at Intercea's Reading co-location facility.  This is designed as a high-power, high-resilience data centre with significant state of the art tier-3 facilities:

· 550 m2 available space
· 2.5 mVA incoming power
· 1mW usable resilient power for computing equipment
· 3 zones with: 150 racks at 4kW; 40 racks at 7kW; and 4 racks at 22kW
· 24/7 on-site security

Ponte Comm has completed two major projects for Intercea involving the provision of cabinetry and cabling during the construction and subsequent extension of the facility.  

The first project consisted of the following:   65 x 47U high x 800mm wide x 800mm deep cabinets 1152 x inter-cabinet Cat 5e links 336 x ‘Cat 7' (600MHz PIMF STP) inter-cabinet links 14 x 12-core multimode fibre optic inter-cabinet links (336 ends) 14 x 12-core singlemode fibre optic inter-cabinet links (336 ends) 14 x 100 pair voice cables 300 x Cat 5e outlets

Rack layout was designed to support 800mm wide racks, which are easier to manage therefore offering improved uptime and reduced overall costs.

Bays of 13 cabinets were supplied and installed within the Data Hall.  Within these bays, 24-way Cat 5e links were installed between each of the 12 ‘Server' cabinets in the bay and the head 'Control' cabinet.  This enabled all patching to be completed within the ‘Control' cabinet only, maximising the physical security and integrity of the equipment within the ‘Server' cabinets.  All patch panels and cables are colour coded to simplify management and reduce mistakes.

All external connectivity is achieved through a secure ‘Meet Me' caged area in the centre of the room.

High-speed links from external services are vital to the operation of the Data Centre.  In order to accommodate this specification and to provide a resilient system, a combination of singlemode fibre optic cable and copper cabling was installed.  This included the UK's 1st commercial 'Cat 7' (600 Mhz PIMF) cable installation.  Our engineering team undertook specialist training in order to complete this work. 

In addition, multimode fibre optic cable links terminated with SC-type connectors were installed to provide a fully resilient system.

The whole system was 100% tested and a Tyco Electronics AMP system warranty provided.

Leading Pharmaceutical Company: Network Core Switches

A typical example of our data centre work is a recent project to provide the latest generation of high availability network services for their R&D sites.

The Network Core switches in the Computer Room were to be replaced.  These were integral to the UK and global operations, making the project time-critical to avoid disruption to the business.  Planning and management were therefore vital, and Ponte Comm worked closely with our client to ensure the project ran smoothly and to schedule. 

The project team worked around the clock over a two day period, and comprised the following:

Servers were taken down 600 x patch cables were disconnected and removed Switches were replaced New patch cables were installed Connections were re-patched as per patching schedule Servers brought back on line    Work started 6.00 am Saturday morning, with all servers back on line by 6pm Sunday evening.

Work was completed under the client's change control with a back out plan in place.  

Ponte Comm were involved from planning stage through implementation to completion.  Together we achieved a 100% success rate for bringing all servers back on line.

To discuss your data cabling needs or for a free, no-obligation quotation please call 01276 63773 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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