Assignment
Never, Ever Down
When airplanes approach a German airport, their flight is monitored by air-traffic controllers who are government employees. Once an airplane touches the ground, responsibility for its movement is transferred to the airport. Frankfurt International Airport-known as Fraport-is Europe's second largest airport and among the busiest in the world. It serves more than 3.5 million passengers per month and this number is growing. It serves air freight of more than 157,360 metric tons per month, and this number, too, is growing.
Like other airports, Fraport uses a wealth of data for its operations, from managing airplanes between landing and takeoff to displaying flight information for passengers to movement of passenger trams. The data must be available 24/7. If it is not available, the airport can allow only emergency landings. More than 120 software applications are housed on the server to provide access to the data as well as to support ground traffic services and office communications.
Fraport's new data center is buried nine meters (27 feet) underground near a runway. It was built in 2006 to replace a 30-year-old data center. The new data center is a classic example of redundancy. Each server has two power sources and two cooling systems. All servers have mirrored "twins" that are housed in a separate room. Electric power is provided by three different companies from three different and separate power grids. Cooling water comes from redundant chillers that provide 1.4 megawatts of cooling capacity. If anything goes wrong with these cooling sources, the airport can use a refrigerated lake it maintains to provide emergency cooling water
However, the redundancy of this airport's systems goes beyond servers, power, and cooling. Even the building itself has redundancy. A separate section within the building houses redundant servers. This building-within-a-building will continue to operate and provide current data if the rest of the building is compromised. Fraport AG is the company that manages the airport. Gedas Operational Services is the company that runs the data center under the supervision of Fraport AG.
Such redundancies are not unusual for government facilities but are rare for commercial enterprises. However, Fraport is partly owned by the German federal government and the government of the state of Hesse, where the airport is located. The federal and state governments wished to protect their ownership
The data center was built fast. One reason for this is the order in which the facility was built. Usually, a company selects servers, then builds a structure to house them and contracts with utility companies to provide power. In this case, the project managers first contracted with the utility companies, then built the facility, and only then selected and purchased the servers. So, when the servers arrived, it took very little time to install them. Experts also observed another important reason for the speed of building the data center: Fraport did not patch its 30-year-old data center. It abandoned it and built a new one from scratch. This eliminated any upgrading of hardware and software. The result was a new, top-of-the-line data center, available within a short time after the design was completed, and which cost significantly less than upgrading the old center would have cost. The center employs 335 people.
To ensure power continuity, the new data center uses American Power Conversion's (APC) InfraStruXure, an array of facilities integrating power, cooling, server racks, management software, and security services. APC executives hosted executives from Fraport and demonstrated the architecture. One year after the Fraport executives decided to use APC's technology, the data center was completed. An APC executive noted that the speed from decision to a running data center of this magnitude was exceptional. He also noted that what enabled this speedy installation is the ability of InfraStrucXure® to integrate all that is needed in such a facility, from power and cooling to security and services The racks can simply be rolled into the new building and the servers can be connected. The system is highly modular. This allows Fraport's CIO to change electric power sources and replace or add servers quite flexibly. Only 35 percent of the physical facility is in use. The rest of the physical plant will accommodate additional hardware, if any is required in the future
Use the Never, Ever Down Case above to Answer the Questions in this Section
A. Fraport's data center uses much redundancy. What is redundant?
B. What is the reason Fraport data center uses so much redundancy?
C. What was the major reason for the short lead time between the decision to build a new data center and the start of operations?
D. Conduct some research about the cost of such a data center. Would a small- or medium-size company be able to afford a data center with so much redundancy?