ACF shut down: update

The site is eerily quiet. 

You take it for granted when walking into our plant and computer room areas that you need to wear ear protection and there is always a constant buzz, hum or vibration from plant or computer equipment. 

But this past week, when walking into our rooms, there’s been an unnerving silence. However this is all part of the plan. 

There has been excellent progress across our major programme of work. Since my last post we have continued with our collective prerequisite works, starting to bring down the underpinning elements of supercomputing and data science service infrastructure as early as Tuesday 26th August. The bulk of our systems shut down on Thursday 28th, along with our Safe Haven Services (SHS) and much of the Edinburgh International Data Facility (EIDF). On Friday 29^th, the majority of our High Performance Computing (HPC) services and shared systems were also shut down.  

We completed our works after an extremely busy day on Friday, which involved all of the Systems Team and a number of colleagues across EPCC, handing the site over to Estates and our external contractors at the 17:00 deadline as per our detailed plan.  

The temporary site external generator sets took up the power for the site from late afternoon, providing auxiliary power and lighting for instance, and the cut over of power went without issue.  

As per my previous post, prior to the shutdown we completed a number of prerequisite works related to site preparation. These included effectively building a new “safe” High Voltage (HV) cage in plant room B (prB), one of the two locations for the replacement switchgear.  This allowed, as part of the plan, for our main contractors to build this in isolation prior to the shutdown, which greatly helped with logistics, deliveries and uplifts.  

^{Above: old prC switchgear removed and ready for uplift.}

Over last weekend, similar work was carried out in plant room C (prC).  For safety reasons, in this location the power had to be turned off prior to completing any work.  The external contractors then removed the existing switchgear, which was uplifted on Monday and Tuesday from the ACF access road.  See photo above, showing the old prC switchgear removed and ready for uplift.

On Monday, the new switchgear was delivered and throughout last week was moved into position.  See next photo.

^{Above: New prC switchgear in position.}

There is still significant work to do (cabling, testing, and proving) to ensure that all room power across to the Low Voltage (LV) infrastructure and site is as expected. This includes programming the complex HV switchgear settings and associated infrastructure.  

Overall, progress has been excellent and at present we are on track for the site to be handed back to us on Monday 15th September.  

^{Below: Cabling to the new prC switchgear being put into place.}