It’s been a while since we last published a Phase 2 update from Netwise London East (NLE), so we thought it would be a good time to update everyone on the current state of play.

We’ve been remarkably busy with both the ongoing expansion works at NLE, alongside the closure of Netwise London Central (NLC), which was retired from active service in early June.

Data Hall 4 went live in May, and quite remarkably, it’s already a touch over half full, despite opening to new clients just a couple of months ago. This is in large part thanks to the absorption of our customer base from NLC, which we migrated over the course of eight evenings in May, however we have also welcomed a host of exciting new clients into our latest data hall.

Let’s take a look at what’s been happening. We start with updates from back in mid-April, before jumping ahead to current day:

It’s fair to say that this summer has already been one of our busiest periods on record. Deploying a new data hall at NLE is no small task in itself, but to deliver this alongside the decommissioning of NLC – which also involved the in-house planning and execution of an entire facility migration – leaves us feeling incredibly proud of the team we have driving Netwise. The complexity of successfully realising a multi-faceted project like this cannot be understated, and seeing these tasks result in tangible improvements to service for our clients is always incredibly pleasing, particularly after making seven figure investments in our future here at London East.

But as with any operation of this nature, these are just the headline deliverable outcomes that have been worked on over the past several months. We’ve undertaken plenty of additional projects in tandem over the last quarter, which may be of interest to our readers.

We completed our full core network upgrade in May, with the final upgrade – and the most major works list – happening at our HEX/LD8 node. This involved a full conversion of this location to our Supernode architecture, which in this case required a full cabinet swap to accommodate. This type of thing requires considerable planning, however our team were able to complete the entire works list within the four hour maintenance window, which was an impressive feat. We also undertook a minor upgrade to our core node in Redcentric Shoreditch (formerly CLL), which brought the entire network upgrade project to completion. This comes as demand on our network grows rapidly, delivering world-class connectivity to clients across all of our on-net locations.

We also grew our fleet in spring, with the addition of an electric pick-up truck, and our own low-loader, which is perfect for rack migrations. The latter vehicle comes in a relatively rare specification for us, with extra height and a 750kg tail lift, which makes it absolutely ideal for the movement of fully populated racks – a game changer for most facility migration projects.

As part of bringing Data Hall 4 online in May, we rolled out new cooling system architecture, which involved some adjustments to how the extraction side of the system works. We now have a twin-hall shared extraction plenum, with a centralised control system, which we believe to be the first of its kind for an evaporative system such as ours. This involved the expert design work of multiple teams, and will also be a part of the roll-out for Data Hall 3 later this year.

Further to this, we have additional cooling being deployed in all data halls in the next few weeks, through the modular installation of further evaporative coolers. Each room is growing from four CREC units, to six CREC units.

---

NLC closure and migration project

In May, we migrated all of the clients in our London Central facility to our new London East facility.

We’re closing our London Central facility, and here’s why

This took many months of planning, however we were able to complete the physical migration process in just eight evening sessions – a real testament to our broad in-house capabilities.

All 126 enclosures were successfully transitioned to our London East facility (with a few landing in other on-net locations where required), with most racks moved in a fully-populated state. This allowed for minimal client disruption, and the fastest possible transition from one site to the other. The fastest migration window took just two hours, from power down at NLC, to being back online at NLE.

Here we have some photos of the now retired facility, which served our clients well for nearly a decade:

The end of an era, but the beginning of a truly special new chapter for Netwise, as we focus on our campus site, London East. We will be expanding this location significantly in the coming months – more on this very soon.

---

What’s next?

The biggest upcoming build work will be the onlining of Data Hall 3, the final hall in the current building at Netwise London East. Work will begin on this hall in the coming weeks. This will be the final component of Phase 2, before Phase 3 works begin in late 2024 / early 2025 – this will be a major development phase.

We hope to announce the next phase of works in an official capacity in the next few weeks.

Otherwise, we will continue to welcome new clients to our world-class facilities, along with the provision of assistance to existing clients looking to grow. This is an exciting time for Netwise, and we look forward to sharing more news with you very soon.

It’s been another very busy stint of work over at Netwise London East, as we continue to deploy Data Hall 3 and Data Hall 4.

While we’ve taken a relatively lengthy break from the #BuildBlog since the last update, the same cannot be said for the development schedule itself, which has been continuing at pace without pause.

Let’s get straight to the photo updates:

This all sits alongside a whole host of additional organisation-wide projects, which includes the full upgrade of our entire core network, across all on-net locations. This will see the staged upgrade of all routing assets on our core network, to cope with ever-increasing demand from our clients. Telehouse has already been undertaken, with our London East site to follow in the next couple of weeks. Equinix LD8 will follow shortly thereafter.

We’ve also had another major round of development work undertaken on our customer portal. This predominantly concerns the backend of the system, with a custom IPAM administration and deployment module now live. We also have additions to the client-side coming very soon, which will improve the booking, tracking and handling of deliveries.

We’re tantalisingly close to announcing some very significant expansion news, but we’ll have to hold back on that for a little while longer – keep an eye on announcements in the coming weeks / months.

We’ve been reasonably quiet with the #BuildBlog of late, with focus squarely on the deployment of additional capacity at London East, leaving little room for deep dives into progress (unfortunately!).

But we’re now back with this latest instalment, as we begin tracking progress on Data Halls 3 and 4.

Looking back on our last instalment of the build blog, Data Hall 2 was still very much under construction. This space is now fully fitted out as a private data hall for a single client, and is now under occupancy.

We’ve also got plenty of other updates to report across a range of areas within our London East facility, thanks to an ongoing development programme which extends beyond footprint capacity alone.

Let’s move onto the update photos. This first set were actually taken back in June, however the next instalment of the build blog ended up getting significantly delayed, so here they are:

Now we can catch up in time to where things stand today, with the next run of photos from the past couple of weeks – apologies for any gaps in progress, we’ve been very busy!

As you can see, despite the delay in getting this build blog instalment posted, we’ve been rather busy.

We’ll continue to get our head down with development work on the run up to the new year, as demand for our services remains exceptionally high. We hope to have another update prepared for our avid readers in the next couple of months.

We also have some further news on the horizon with regards to continued expansion, which we hope to be releasing early next year. Needless to say, we’re very excited for what 2024 will bring.

Progress continues with Phase 2 development works at Netwise London East (NLE), as we head into the warmer summer months.

Data Hall 2 is approaching completion, which will be another fantastic milestone to reach in the total development journey of our newest facility. There have been solid advancements made in all aspects of the Data Hall 2 roll-out, with the most notable being the progress made on power and cooling infrastructure.

As before, we’ll keep things brief, and move straight onto the progress shots:

Further to the visual updates above, the supplementary / backup air conditioning system is also nearing the point of commissioning, with the pipework installation underway, following the same routes as with the system for Data Hall 1.

Once Data Hall 2 is livened up in terms of the power delivery system(s), the full commissioning works for the primary and secondary cooling systems can begin, which will bring the room to the point of safe occupancy (pending the fitout of the containment Pods, of course!).

We’ve been extremely pleased with progress on-site in the last few weeks. One thing that continues to shine through above all else is the quality of the work, which is something we and our clients alike have come to expect from a Netwise data centre. Every detail is carefully considered, resulting in a truly remarkable facility that we can be proud of for many years to come.

Working Phase 2 around an already active data centre has added additional challenges, not felt during Phase 1 (whereby the site was unoccupied by client deployments). While none of the works undertaken as part of Phase 2 pose any risk to live client services, there are many considerations to bear for enabling continued client access while many areas of the facility are being actively worked on.

We’ve been making steady progress on Phase 2 of our deployment plan at Netwise London East (NLE). This includes the total completion of Pod 2 in Data Hall 1, and large strides towards the onlining of Data Hall 2 in the coming months. This will be followed shortly thereafter with the base infrastructure deployment for Data Halls 3 and 4 later in the year.

We’ve been moving ahead firmly across various areas of general infrastructure, electrical and cooling systems for Data Hall 2, with the primary evaporative cooling system now in place ahead of commissioning. The feeder connections from the LV rooms to the in-hall distribution boards are now also in place, ahead of the main electrical works for the diverse rack feeds beginning in the coming weeks.

We’ll keep things brief this time around, so let’s get straight to the update photos:

We now have a dedicated roof hatch system installed over the storage mezzanine, for easier, direct access to the roof, which is important for speedy access to our heat extraction loop. We’ll update readers with photos of this area next time around.

We’re expecting to see a dramatic uptick in progress on Data Hall 2 in the next few weeks, as we head towards the peak activity period which will enable occupation of the space. This will also provide some additional visual change to enable a more in-depth update, which is something which has been lacking since the completion of Phase 1 – we apologise to our regular Build Blog readers for this!