DPC of Xelent (before SDN) St. Petersburg

The DPC of Xelent (raneesdn) in St. Petersburg is a data center on 1476 racks with the design load of 6.3 kW of a rack on average and with a total power of 14 MW, the project area of technology premises is 6500 sq.m. The project is executed taking into account requirements to Tier III of TIA-942 standard and is the first step in strategy implementation of SDN company on creation of federal network of the innovation DPCs in the largest centers of business activity of the Russian Federation. The purpose of this strategy is providing developing economy of the Russian Federation necessary business and infocommunication infrastructure. It is open in January, 2014.

The created infrastructure allows to render become standard for the market of commercial data centers of service of placement of the equipment and also telecommunication and telematic services. Besides, the companies tenants can take advantage of the offer on creation of autonomous server premises with individual characteristics of reservation of elements of engineering infrastructure and access control.

The project is implemented at a financial support of the "Development Bank and Foreign Economic Activity (Vnesheconombank)" State corporation. According to the Memorandum of financial policy strategic computer technologies and the software and also information communications systems are among the main industry priorities of investment activities of Bank.

Infrastructure

The strategy of regional development of SDN are the cornerstone the potential and possibilities of the solution Stack. A cube, patented in 2012. The modular data centers constructed on this technology are capable to provide the indicators of reliability, energy efficiency, environmental friendliness conducting on the industry and also the utilization properties, best in the segment.

Project capacity of the started DPC is 1476 racks which are placed in 9 server modules. The platform at any stage of lifecycle can be adapted to more high loads on a rack — the principle of functioning of modular data centers of SDN allows to implement without interruption in providing services soft transition to use of power-intensive solutions ICT (up to 40÷50 of kW on a rack) and also to increase the number of modules.

Among the main features of the SDN nodes in the company noted: energy efficiency (annual average PUE value no more than 1.15) which is reached due to flexible management by air flows; high error protection of personnel — result of use in data center of the integrated monitoring systems and intelligent systems of decision making which provide simplicity and high quality of forecasting of events; compliance to strict requirements of physical and information security that is implemented due to physical separation of all functional modules (server premises and elements of the DTs life support system) and also application safe for the equipment and personnel of technologies of fire extinguishing.

All elements of construct and engineering infrastructure of modular data centers of SDN are made and undergo quality control at the profile plants of Europe and Russia that provides their standardization and simplifies service and carrying out scheduled works.

The balanced utilization properties put in the principle of functioning of modular data centers of SDN allow to provide on new platforms a possibility of the choice of level of reliability of racks of the client in the range from Tier II to Tier IV on Uptime Institute classification — depending on business challenges of corporate clients and specifics of the ICT equipment.

Besides, unlike the majority of the projects executed in Russia in recent years data centers in St. Petersburg and Kazan are not built in already ready premises, and created from scratch — on specially selected ground, emphasized in the company. Each of them will represent the separate building with the engineering infrastructure implemented turnkey with the high level of reservation of components. Thanks to modularity of the organization of data centers rates of their input in operation and upgrades are significantly higher at the scales and characteristics comparable with classical solutions, claim in SDN.

All buildings and constructions of a complex are built on the special project on own land plot more than 3 hectares provided with technology connection to networks of Lenenergo with a power of 14 MW. In addition to process modules the complex includes office spaces for accommodation of clients and service staff, warehouse, a reserve fuel storage, handling and parking zones.

Safety is ensured by echelon multi-layer system using modern technical means. Level of reliability of the technology systems is provided with full redundancy of engineering infrastructure, two independent external power inputs of 10 kV and two independent routes fiber-optic communication line and also a highly skilled team of experts of SDN in the mode of operation 24x7x365.

Specifications

• The area of the land plot – 3.2 hectares
• Accession power - 10 MBA
• Category of joining of the client - the First special
• Mounted capacity: 1074 racks
• Project uninterrupted operation of work of 99.982%
• A system from 4 dynamic UPSes with a total power of 4.8 MW
• 8 cells of cooling of Free Cooling with a total power of 4.8 MW
• Trunk the fiber-optic communication line from 100% reservation of routes to the main points of exchange of traffic

Services

• Placement of the equipment - With unlimited opportunities of expansion in process of growth of corporate infrastructure. Offices for personnel
• Cloud services of IaaS - Necessary IT infrastructure in the shortest possible time.
• Reserve DPC - The DPC organization in a cloud.
• Leasing of the equipment and Lease of servers - Standard configurations and individual solutions. The shortest time of providing the equipment in lease
• The free choice of the telecom operator - More than 20 operators (VimpelCom, Megafon, MTS, Rostelecom, RETN, Orange, Prometey and dr)
• Technical support - the Round-the-clock technical support, services of REMOTE HANDS, SMART HANDS, the client room
• Migration, the help in moving - the Organization of process of migration, maintenance by specialists at all stages of the project.
• Security - 5 perimeters of protection, video surveillance with a possibility of image output on the panel of the Security service of the client, the certificate of PCI DSS.

2020: Rosenergoatom intends to purchase Xelent

At the beginning of December, 2020 it became known of intentions of Rosenergoatom to purchase data centers. "Subsidiary" of Rosatom, according to her deputy director general and the chief financial officer Sergey Migalin, also considers the possibility of construction of new DPCs. Among possible acquisitions - Xelent. Read more here.

2019

Achievement of 80% of filling of racks

On July 23, 2019 it became known that the commercial data center of Xelent for the St. Petersburg DPCs reached the level of filling of racks of 80%. Such result is achieved due to growth of quantity of the installed racks in the first half of the year 2019. As an incentive for inflow of clients successful certification of Xelent on compliance to the Tier 3 level served.

The essential role in achievement of 80% of filling was entered by the existing clients who considerably increased the presence at data center, having transferred to it the equipment from other data centers (including from other regions) or own server.

The high level of filling of Xelent testifies to technology advantages which provide the high density of placement of the client equipment, note in the company. 48U-racks expected average consumption of 10 kW and cooling with PUE 1.3 are applied to its achievement in DPC of Xelent. Xelent offers clients not only services of placement of the equipment, but also provides it in lease, loading thereby the capacity. The data center was always guided by all client segments - from units to tens and hundreds of racks that allowed to provide inflow of clients from the different industries and scales of business.

In the development strategy Xelent – further transition to service model and development of client applications. The company increases sales of partner cloud solutions, working on model of the multi-cloud aggregator, in parallel developing the portfolio of cloud services where there are no proposals of partners. Recently the DPC started a personal account for clients in which it is possible to manage the resources and to connect products, and provides to all clients, irrespective of scale, service of enterprise-level and technical support from four specialists of different specialties in mode 24\7.

The cloud service - virtual data center under control of VMware vCloud Director - allows clients to manage quickly cloud infrastructure and to deeply integrate it into the available IT infrastructure of the company.

We collect a pool of clients to which free testing of virtual DPC and a virtual private cloud by term at once for three months will be provided. Actually, the benefit of the client from test operation of service will be about one million rubles. And after the end of the test period we guarantee the cost of service below, than on average in the market, comments Ilya Rogov, the director of cloud services of Xelent

Start of VDC under control of vCloud Director and service for creation of private clouds

The cloud provider of Xelent working based on large commercial data center in North-West Region announced on June 17, 2019 expansion of a line of cloud services two services: virtual data center (VDC) based on VMware under control of vCloud Director and service for creation of turnkey private clouds.

VDC under control of vCloud Director allows to create and delete independently virtual machines and to change their configurations and also to differentiate access for users to resources by means of assignment of the rights and roles both at the level of the companies, and in the organization. In practice it gives the chance to customers quickly and without capital costs to unroll own cloud IT infrastructure or to quickly integrate cloud computing powers into already available infrastructure.

As of June 17 of Xelent collects a pool of clients for free test operation of this cloud service.

The service for creation of private clouds first of all is intended for the companies imposing special requirements to security. The selected equipment cluster with the unrolled virtualization of VMware is provided to the customer. The specifics of this service consist that unlike a public cloud, all cloud resources are used only by one organization. To information which is stored on the servers installed in data center only customer representatives have access. The organization of the strengthened physical protection of the equipment with the round-the-clock video surveillance in a server cell is in addition available to this service.

In turn, the private cloud is ready to use and it can be provided to the client within several hours after agreement signature. At the same time, the Xelent command owns all necessary competences for creation of private clouds on the client's configuration, selection of the equipment for lease or purchase, installation of the equipment on the platform of the customer.

The first three months we are ready to provide to our clients cloud services within these two products absolutely free of charge. After the end of this period we guarantee to the client some of the most affordable prices in the market for the clouds using virtualization of VMware — Ilya Rogov, the director of cloud services of data center of Xelent noted.

All engineering infrastructure Xelent is placed in own data center certified according to standards Tier III and PCI DSS that guarantees the due level of reliability and security emphasized in Xelent. Protection from DDoS- attacks to services of clients is in addition performed.

Certificate of Tier III

On March 19, 2019 it became known that the data center of Xelent became the St. Petersburg's first commercial DPC certified by Uptime Institute according to the Tier III standard. On the project documentation less than 30 data centers in Russia, less than a half of which commercial, have the certificate of Tier III. The document will allow Xelent to strengthen positions in the colocation markets and cloud services as existence of the certificate of Tier III is a selection condition for many Russian and foreign customers.

The Tier III level assumes compliance to strict requirements to non-failure operation of operation of the equipment. Obtaining the certificate of Tier III means that service life of infrastructure solutions considerably exceeds customers needs. In particular, data centers of the Tier III level should provide lack of interruptions in operation of the equipment during its replacement and maintenance. Also Tier III assumes reservation of critical components of power supply and cooling and also channels of their delivery — thus, any part of engineering infrastructure can fail without prejudice to operation of IT-systems.

2018

Level of filling of DPC reached 75%

On February 4, 2019 it became known that the Data center of Xelent summed up the results of the first five years of work. By 2018 the level of filling of DPC reached 75%, and Xelent share in the St. Petersburg market of data centers for last years exceeded 25%. For February, 2019 the company is a participant of national infrastructure of digital economy regarding data storage.

The data center of Xelent designed taking into account requirements of the Tier III standard is expected placement more than 70 thousand items of equipment. In 5 years UDI company, the operator of DPC, constructed 5 add-on server modules and increased quantity of racks for customers by 7 times. Capacities of data center ensure smooth operation of IT infrastructures of hundreds of large Russian companies from the different industries: financial sphere, wholesale and retail, transport and logistics, public sector and many others.

Formation of the cloud direction, including start of a cloud platform of Xelent.cloud became one of key events in 5 years of work. The start of operation of the aggregator of cloud services of Xelent.MultiCloud within which the company develops and implements the complex IT infrastructures projects using services of providers based on 4 hypervisors became an important milestone. Sales of cloud products according to the results of two years grew more, than by 9 times.

Among our customers there are more and more technological companies - it is service and cloud providers, social networks, application developers. A specific place is held by financial institutions: increase in their quantity led us to certification on the PCI DSS standard and implementation of its regulations in daily use. We developed such services as "DPC in DPC" for 'professional' customers, provided them additional physical and intellectual protection. Ilya Rogov, marketing director of Xelent

In 5 years Xelent achieved significant technology progress. The command of data center managed to achieve a low indicator of energy efficiency (PUE) — for February, 2019 it is at the level of 1.3. For comparison, at the end of 2018 the average indicator of PUE in the world was 1.58.

On blueprint stage of data center we were guided by customers from Europe and the USA. However the start of commercial operation had for the beginning of 2014 which brought considerable political and economic changes. In the conditions of sanctions the western companies began to review the plans for business development in Russia: negotiations were frozen also by primary clients of steel for us the Russian companies. Andrey Yeliseyev, director of the St. Petersburg branch Xelent

Annual average indicator of energy efficiency of DPC — 1.3

On January 28, 2019 the Xelent company reported that it summed up the technical results of 2018. The annual average indicator of energy efficiency of DPC (PUE) was 1.3. It for one 100-th higher than 2017. The reason of growth of an indicator on 0.01 — abnormally hot summer in the European territory of Russia, one of the warmest for all history of observations that became testing for cooling systems of all data centers.

According to the company, for three years the data center of Xelent managed to increase energy efficiency level: the annual average indicator of PUE during the period from 2015 to 2017 inclusive decreased from 1.45 to 1.29. The best PUE values for 2018 managed to be received in January, February, November and December: the indicator was 1.24 that it is on average two 100-th better, than the previous year. It was most difficult to provide energy efficiency level during the period, abnormally hot for the St. Petersburg climate, from May to September when average monthly temperatures, according to a monitoring system of weather indicators of Xelent, were 2 — 4 °C higher, than in 2017.

In 2018 we were going to reduce annual average PUE by 0.01 — 0.02 due to optimization of distribution of air flows and improvement of quality of isolation of cold and hot corridors. But abnormally hot summer – a serious call for the cooling system. In such conditions of PUE 1.3 is a good indicator. Thanks to our Kyoto-kuling cooling system the data center not only saves the electric power, but also provides the level of reliability of all systems. Annual average PUE Xelent validate the choice of the region for placement of data center. The northwest of Russia is optimal as from the point of view of a large number of qualified personnel, ensuring good connectivity, and in terms of climatic conditions and energy efficiency Evgeny Rodin, director of operation of data center of Xelent

2017

Decrease in an indicator of PUE to 1.29

Commercial data center of St. Petersburg Xelent summed up the results of technical development in 2017. For last year the annual average indicator of PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) of data center was 1.29. These are the lowest indicators not only in the St. Petersburg market date cents, but also in all Russia (among publicly available for January 1, 2018), claim in data center. Optimization of the organization of the DPC and also own innovation cooling system in which the rotor heat exchanger is used allowed to achieve such result.

In three years of Xelent managed to lower an annual average indicator of PUE with 1.45 in 2015 to 1.29 in 2017 — in the Russian data centers opening data on an indicator of PUE, it makes 1.3 and above. Expense reduction on the electric power which in the Russian DPCs make from 25 to 50% of operating costs became key result of improvement of an indicator of PUE. Thus, the data center has an opportunity to provide to clients services, more effective in terms of costs for IT infrastructure.

Such dynamics of decrease in three years — a consequence of full-time work on technical optimization of DPC, to ensuring uninterrupted operation its electro-and cold supply — Evgeny Rodin, the director of operation of data center of Xelent explained. — We build the long-term strategy of business proceeding from the fact that improvement of technical base, including cooling systems, allows to create optimal offers for clients. For the next 2018 and 2019 an effective objective to improve this indicator on 0.01-0.02 in a year due to optimization of distribution of air flows and quality improvement of isolation of cold and hot corridors.

The data center of Xelent will provide seamless moving across Russia

The St. Petersburg data center of Xelent provided in July, 2017 service in equipment transportation from any data center or office to DPC of Xelent with transfer of IT infrastructures of clients in a cloud environment. Moving happens "seamlessly" – without stopping services, to the organization of the reserve platform and the insurance plan. The service is available to clients from any point of Russia.

The project of moving includes approval of the plan of migration, the location and switching, transfer of IT infrastructure in a cloud, dismantling of the equipment, packaging, transportation, unpacking, installation of equipment, recovery of switching and check of working capacity together with the client. Earlier the data center of Xelent provided services in moving of the equipment without transfer of IT infrastructures in a cloud.

Renaming into Xelent

In March the data center of SDN (Stack Data Network) carried out rebranding and changed the name. Top managers of the company announced the new Xelent brand and marketing strategy.

Survey conducted by marketing department among clients showed: the name SDN is associated, first of all, with technical terms and abbreviations, but not with values of the company – high-quality support, 100% "aptaymy" and the attentive relation. Therefore the new name is linguistically connected with the English word 'Excellent' ("excellent") that reflects the level of service and approach to satisfaction of requests of the most exacting clients.

The efficiency of infrastructure maintenance is allowed Xelent to save on support of operation of the equipment and to do to clients more advantageous price offers. The company increases capacities with the minimum costs: The DPC is expected 1476 racks, and from them 1074 (6 server modules on 164 cells in everyone) are put into operation. Three more modules will be started in the nearest future.

Reliability of the equipment, price leadership and the developed system of sales positively affected a gain of number of clients: 308 companies placed the equipment or rented capacities of DPC of Xelent (550 paid racks). More 300th kliyentovdata-center – the regional and federal enterprises of different scales and the industry markets: trade, logistics, tourism, finance, etc.

Experts of Xelent noted that even in such situation the company gains the greatest income not from a regional business sector, and from large players of the digital market – content - and IT providers. About 58% of revenue fall to their share (a little more than 5% of the total number of clients). According to him, regional business so far only comes to understanding that with digitalization of business processes income of the company of any scale depends on quality and the level of reliability its IT infrastuktury. At the same time in the market every day it is more and more offers.

According to top managers of Xelent, strategically right approach to sales in the market – gaining leader positions in the industry sector and the offer of such products which correspond to criteria of quality of the best world practices. Utilization properties (KPI on infrastructure and service maintenance), operational efficiency of data center of Xelent – the new SDN brand – are at the level of leaders of the world market.

The share of cloud services of data center does not exceed 5% of total number, but by 2020 Xelent is going to increase it to 40%. Among other DPCs will offer services of SaaS (VDI– virtual desktops) and IaaS ('vDC' – virtual data center; 'VPS\VDS' – the virtual server and 'cloud storage' – the cloud storage).

2016

The DPC of SDN obtained licenses of FSTEC and FSB

The data center of SDN in the Northwestern Federal District obtained the license of FSTEC for installation, installation, tests, repair of information security tools and the license of FSB for design, delivery of encryption systems, operation and service of information and telecommunication systems with cryptographic data protection, providing in lease of communication channels and systems with protection by enciphering.

"The obtained licenses grant to us the right to begin rendering services in data protection in information systems and communication channels or at our clients, or provided in lease, - the director of the St. Petersburg branch SDN Yeliseyev Andrey Robertovich comments. - The most demanded services such are: protection of communication channels, data warehouses, personal data protection. I am glad that among DPC of the Northwest we the first begin to render such services".

Now SDN provides all range of services on data protection including design, delivery, a commissioning and operation of the systems of data protection of our clients.

C3 Solutions created a server cabinet of new type for DPC of the UDI

The DPC of the UDI completed tests and accepted a server cabinet of new type in operation. The uniqueness of construction consists in an opportunity to separate space of a cabinet 48U on 2 or 3 sections high with a capacity of 23U and 15U with individual doors and locks and also the isolated intra rack cable entries (trays, channels).

The DPC of the UDI by request of which C3 Solutions - the Russian decision maker for DPC - designed and put in production a product at own plant in Belgorod acted as the initiator of development. The developer specializes in release of the equipment and software products for equipment of DPC, machine halls, hardware, production workshops, etc.

Joint developmental works of data center of the UDI and C3 Solutions began in 2014. During this time 5 samples of cabinets were developed, made and tested.

The construction, the modern metalworking equipment, the painting line and robotic assembly implemented on the production site of C3 Solutions provide high quality of the made equipment.

"We are very happy with results of this development, – Yeliseyev Andrey, the director of the St. Petersburg DPC of the UDI says. – It allowed data center to provide to clients in lease the closed sections on 23U or 15U. I as the Russian engineer, I am proud of the fact that in the same row with cabinets of Panduit and Conteg company there will be Russian mnogosektsionnik who at all are not conceding on functionality and quality".

Comment of the CEO of C3 Solutions Maxim Kyrkunov: "For us it was important to find the solution which would be equitable to the interests of clients of one of the largest DPCs in Russia. Jointly with specialists of the UDI we finished construction of the cabinets, tested and were convinced of high reliability of the turned-out product. In addition to high-quality executions the new cabinet allowed to meet completely requirements of DPC of the UDI, having provided at the same time significant economy of means".

Under multisection cabinets of the UDI selects 5 percent of the mounted capacity that makes 50 cabinets for 150 clients.

2015

In DPC the procedure of certification is complete

On July 13, 2015 became it is known of completion of the procedure of certification of data center of UDI company on the PCI DSS standard^[1].

Existence of the certificate confirms technical and operational compliance data processing center (DPC) to requirements for information and physical security, the international payment systems shown by standards of security.

"The certificate of PCI DSS guarantees to clients safety of placement of the equipment and lease of virtual resources — Andrey Yeliseyev, the director of data center of the UDI told. — We provide services to high reliability and security from unauthorized access to information of our clients. I am sure that in combination with the attractive price we will interest not only the enterprises of St. Petersburg, but also Moscow and also other regions. We will be glad to clients from the whole country and we will help with planning and the organization of moving without interruption of functioning of the IT environment of the customer".

The data processing center of the UDI increased power to 450 racks

On July 27, 2015 the UDI company announced data center commissioning and the beginning of sales of the third queue of capacity of 164 server cabinets.

This step of DPC of UDI company comes to the second position on value in the region with a power of 450 racks.

"Expansion of data center is caused by growth of the customer base, - Andrey Yeliseyev, the head of data center of the UDI emphasized. - Demand for our services grows because of their high reliability and low price. Until the end of the year we will enter 3 more queues for our clients and we will exceed the capacity of 1000 server cabinets. We were also prepared for service of the foreign companies which will start moving to our country of platforms of personal data processing of Russians in the fall".

For the end of 2015 the Center services more than 300 clients who provided to 70% filling of its mounted capacity to equal 1074 racks. The DPC shows a ratio of power consumption to useful, the so-called PUE equal 1.25.

General design of Stack. The cube allows to implement N+2 reservation of cooling systems and power supply with the minimum redundancy, so with small energy costs.

Dynamic sources of regular power supply succeeded static because of their higher reliability and cost efficiency. Operational statistics for last two years allowed to specify several important characteristics of these systems, such as, for example, time of start of diesel generators (does not exceed 3 seconds), reverse currents at parallel inclusion of the main and reserve sources, extent of filtering of tension dynamic filters. The received amendments significantly exceeded estimations of reliability of these systems.

The cooling system by the principle of free-cooling also proved the profitability and stability of work. Within 2 years additional cooling with DX machines joins totally no more than for 5-7 days. In the rest of the time each of installations generating 600 kW of cold consumed only 30 kW.

2014: Asteros constructed network infrastructure for SDN on Panduit equipment

The Asteros group became the technology partner of SDN company on creation of the commercial center of data processing, largest in the North-western federal district. During the project specialists of Asteros designed and unrolled failsafe network infrastructure based on Panduit equipment.

Based on solutions of Panduit company specialists of Asteros developed the project of creation of SCS in server cells of data center for connection of telecommunication equipment to external bus systems of communication and switching of the equipment within DPC. For placement of an active telecommunication and passive switching equipment 20 special cabinets and 22 racks (19 inches) of production Panduit set in uniform stacks were set.

Work of the technology systems are provided with full redundancy of engineering infrastructure, two independent external power inputs of 10 kV and two independent routes fiber-optic communication line. In general, delivery and installation of equipment of Panduit in the process module of the first, second and third stage of DPC of SDN company took 3 months. Constructed by SCS completely corresponds to category 6 according to ANSI/TIA/EIA-568-C.2 standard and a class E according to the ISO/IEC 11801:2010 standard and has backup capacity in 30%. Besides, thanks to use of advanced technologies, DPC of SDN exceeds many modern data centers of Eastern Europe and the USA on energy efficiency coefficient.

Notes