IT Facilities Design and Audit

The Systems House has provided design consulting services for several facility projects including power generation and distribution, HVAC, equipment layout, fire detection and suppression, lighting, building management systems and optimal site layout. We have extensive knowledge of PV(Solar) solutions design and optimisation. Projects completed include:

The Systems House was contracted to support the Acceptance Testing of a 220 rack facility in East Africa. This included specification of the tests, oversight of the testing conducted by the contractor, review of test reports and determining non-compliances and additional tests and remediation work required.

data centre acceptance testing

Under contract to Digitalthings, the Systems House conducted a technical and operational due diligence on a large African data centre operator, with facilities in South, East and West Africa. Subject matter experts in electrical, mechanical and civil domains were included in the team to provide in-depth assessments of each facility.

The Systems House has been contracted by multiple South African organisations to design and build prototypes of integrated power systems for communications infrastructure. Specific projects included 12V backup/PV system for street poles, 48V power system for mobile operator deployments, power solution for a Starlink-based remote communication unit, and power solution for a tower camera deployment. In all cases, a prototype was built for testing and optimisation of design and integration.

Power systems development

The Systems House was contracted by Master Power Technologies to support the Stage 3 design of a Tier IV 250 rack facility in Lagos, Nigeria. The scope included participation in the multi-disciplined design sessions, drafting of a detailed Basis of Design, documenting technical specifications for various electrical sub-systems, participating in design reviews, liaison with the client.

The Systems House undertook the design, testing and commissioning of two multi-antenna teleports for a leading ISP in Africa. The first included a 13m Ku band system, 13m C band system, 6m C band system and four collocated test VSATs.

The second teleport included 3 x 7.3m antennas,1 x 6.1m antenna, 2 x 3.8m antennas and multiple smaller antennas as well as overall site planning, equipment containers, generators, UPS, and integration of the VSAT hubs.

The project included the integration of multiple iDirect hubs, SkyWAN hub, SCPC modems and a SkyWire system onto these antennas and a fully remotely accessed Monitor and Control system and remote spectrum analyser. The project was completed in six months.

The work package also included business analysis and documentation of the VSAT network installation, commissioning and operations procedures.

Multi-antenna Teleport Design and Commissioning

A South African data centre provider spotted an opportunity to establish an open access teleport facility in Johannesburg, South Africa to complement their data centre business. Via Stratosat Datacomm, The Systems House was contracted to plan the site layout, design the electrical reticulation and power generation, plan the telecomms container layout and include all facility aspects eg. fire system, monitor and control, cooling etc.

The first phase of the teleport has been completed and multiple antenna systems installed. 

TCO

Consulting provided for the MeerKAT Radio Telescope Project included the design, analysis and testing of the antenna’s power distribution system including:

  • Isolation Transformer
  • Dual power distribution panels with monitoring of all circuit breakers
  • Power EMI filters
  • Reticulation layout

The 64 MeerKAT antennas have been installed and commissioned at the SKA site near Carnarvon, Northern Cape.

MeerKat

Avanti is a satellite operator providing Ka band VSAT connectivity across Africa, Middle East and Europe. Local gateways are required at major hubs within the satellite’s service footprint. The Systems House has lead the design process for the gateways in Nigeria and South Africa. These comprise of dual sites, each hosting a 9m Ka band antenna. The design work included:

  • Facility layout
  • Power generation and distribution
  • Data Centre design and analysis including equipment racks, cooling, fire detection and suppression, lighting etc
  • Security systems and Building Management System

Oneweb is a low earth orbit satellite constellation offering global coverage. Oneweb require gateways around the globe with one planned for Accra, Ghana. The Systems House is providing the lead engineering and design team for this project under contract to Comsys Ghana who are the in-country hosts. The Oneweb gateway includes:

  • 15 x 3.5m full motion Ku band antennas installed on a 13 acre site
  • Tier III standard 30 rack Data centre including raised floor, HVAC with hot aisle containment, 500kW fully redundant Power generation and distribution; 6.6kW power per rack
  • Redundant fibre backhaul to the site and site fibre network connecting all antennas to the data centre
  • Security systems, site lighting and Building Management System
Oneweb

The Systems House provided the lead technical and operational resource for a due diligence on a large Tier III data centre provider in West Africa with multipl data centres and Metro POPs. The due diligence entailed a full technical review of power, HVAC, BMS/DCIM, fire detection and suppression systems, physical layout and analysis of operational aspects such as uptime, PUE, occupancy rates, maintenance schedules, incidents etc.