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On 2008-07-29T11:14+0100 Paul Sutton wrote: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_center > is useful for anyone wondering what a Data Centre actually is, makes > useful reading. > Is there a skills base you can draw on to help run the centre, you > don't want to find you can't get the skilled staff, are you willing to > take on non skilled staff and actually train them, rather than what most > companies do which is to whinge about lack of skills. What skills are > needed. ? Couple of good points raised. I can draw on my own experience from a popular and successful co-location facility in Helsinki, Finland and working in the Docklands, London. I think there is a tendency for people to go a little over the top with data centres especially in the UK. In Finland the co-location facility / data centre was basically an old disused factory. No raised flooring, no proper air conditioning (compared to Docklands). The UPS only worked a couple of minutes whilst signalling people to shutdown ASAP. The pictures on the Website http://www.pannuhuone.fi/ are stock photos or at least not the one which was used by all the startups. Pannu huone translates to boiler room. In fact I think part of the data centre is in an old factory boiler room. I would model my setup on what I've seen in Helsinki. However the Cornish data center would be (don't laugh) in a barn (a sealed off part), though with an air conditioning unit. Since I imagine the data centre would be largely of a "co-location" sort, the skills required once setup are quite low. I.e. power cycling type tasks and someone who lived close to the facility to ensure there is some physical security. Kind regards, -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html