Jul
16
WRITTEN BY:
Greg Goode
Thursday, 16 July 2009
Looking at the criteria that constitutes the four data centre tiers specified in TIA 942, there’s one that sets me thinking: the proximity of the data centre to major capital city airports (not the secondary light-aircraft airports). It’s ok for a tier 1 or 2 data centre, yet, for some reason, tier 3 and 4 data centres need to look elsewhere.
My interest in this comes from my association with aviation. For the last 36 years I’ve been a pilot and I have family members who have been airline transport pilots with collectively over 35,000 hours of flying experience. Here, in the aviation industry, we have an environment that is highly-regulated and is one of mankind’s top-end of technology endeavours. Yet the data centre industry, which considers itself to be a top-end technology, has a fear of such localities—a groundless fear, I say.
Many major capital city airports, apart from managing passengers and freight, have also ventured into commercial business parks as there is usually an abundance of land around the airport which is ideal for this use. It is fast becoming one of the main revenue streams of these corporations. Many airport corporations see the mixed business park as an attractive proposition to potential data centre users. But data centre users, the ones who require a tier 3 or 4 level of resiliency, are the very ones that shun such sites because the tier criteria considers close proximity to airports is a level of risk which necessitates maintaining distance from them.
Of course, the risk that immediately comes to mind is aircraft accidents (bluntly speaking, crashes). But is this risk that high and does it have any validity in selecting such sites for a tier 3 or 4 data centre?
Let’s get some facts straight. Aircraft are rigidly controlled from taxi-ing to takeoff, cruise and on landing. Their three-dimensional flight paths are defined within metres through the controlled airspace they traverse. The technology on board today’s modern aircraft is highly sophisticated, reliable and there are multiple backups. Air traffic management, in and around main airports, is controlled. Aircrew and air-traffic controllers train for thousands of hours in the course of their working life—they undergo regular medicals, they are constantly checked for proficiency. The airport and airways environment is built on a philosophy of managing and minimising risk. So where is the risk to a data centre!?
If anything an airport precinct is highly-regulated and the technology which uses it is probably the best understood—one of the most sophisticated and safest in the world. Around the world, thousands of aircraft land and take-off each day without mishap. But when one does occur, the outcome is invariably constrained to the runway or occurs well away from the airport (if it is weather- or terrain-related).
The highest risk in an aircraft’s flight profile is landing, and many of the top airports have fully automated landings. Aircrafts’ navigation and systems management have been programmed with rigidly-defined approach plate data so as to ensure aircraft separation and optimal approach profiles in all weather.
It’s a fact that disabled aircraft are directed to a runway, not into open fields or built environments. The airport authorities want to control its landing (whatever the severity) as they have emergency services (fire and medical) to handle and manage the outcome for the airport. Aircraft, once they make contact with the ground, have a tendency to stay on track and pull-up very quickly due to friction—they don’t swerve off at 90 degrees on touch-down. Maybe Hollywood disaster scenes are clouding our thinking? An aircraft crashing on a runway is, believe it or not, very constrained.
Have those with the fear of flying skewed data centre planning with regard to locating the data centre? A data centre, of any tier, should not be discounted from an airport precinct. Located within the airport precinct are: passenger terminals worth tens of millions of dollars, moving thousands of lives; on-site hotels with thousands of guests; airline industry staff accommodation buildings; and hangers with hundreds of millions of dollars of aircraft hardware. And business parks on airport land are planned parallel to the runways; they’re not built under the runway approaches or within flight landing and take-off hazard zones where accidents may occur.
It’s ironic that disabled aircraft are landed next to airline terminals full of people!
If ever there was bad science—or, in this case, bad data centre planning—this is an example. We have entered the 21st century with an aviation industry that is ubiquitous with our built environment, and a modern data centre industry which can easily co-exist with it, at any tier. But the committees who pontificate over data centre standards are still locked in the early 20th century with Zeppelins and canvas, wire and wood aviation mindsets.