The new Chorus Mt Eden datacentre (MOD2)

Forums › New Zealand Broadband › The new Chorus Mt Eden datacentre (MOD2) - Where is It

udmada

10 posts

Wannabe Geek

#309310 7-Oct-2023 14:17

According to this [non-official page](https://www.datacenterjournal.com/data-centers/new-zealand/auckland/chorus-edgecentre-mount-eden/), the MOD2 Mt Eden Edge Centre is at the Methodist church? Surely this is incorrect, for Chorus [claims](https://sp.chorus.co.nz/product-update/theres-more-room-edge) the building is civil-defence rated etc. And I am not aware any new constructions happening around the village for recent years. Plus why? Epsom is expensive!

yitz

2041 posts

Uber Geek

#3143965 7-Oct-2023 14:24

The address is given on the first unofficial page you linked to under

Frequently Asked Questions About Chorus Edgecentre - Mount Eden
How can I find Chorus Edgecentre - Mount Eden?

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SomeoneSomewhere

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#3143972 7-Oct-2023 15:02

Looks like a classic old telephone exchange. Perhaps removing the NEAXs led to space being freed up?

I thought Spark owned the physical exchange buildings.

decibel

311 posts

Ultimate Geek

#3143973 7-Oct-2023 15:06

It is an old telephone exchange.

Only some exchange buildings were kept by Spark, most went to Chorus.

SomeoneSomewhere

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#3143978 7-Oct-2023 15:25

Ah, that would make more sense. The vast majority of the plant is more relevant to Chorus anyhow.

atomeara

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#3147312 13-Oct-2023 18:56

The new EdgeCentre site is on the ground floor in the exchange.

The existing pod is upstairs.

The building is behind The Garden Shed.

Mantells is the original telephone exchange opened in the 1920's

This site was opened in the 1960s and replaced the 1920's one

Some parts are original while other areas have been upgraded.

The NEAX hasn't been removed yet,

You go from huge rack sized modern routers / switches and data centres pods to 1980's NEAXs to the original 1960's copper MDF within 20-30m of each other.

BarTender

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#3147932 16-Oct-2023 06:42

From memory there were about 70 key exchanges that Spark kept, and the rest went to Chorus.

Having been in a few over the years they are ripe for development as small datacenters however have a few issues.

They are predominately wired for 48v DC which was good back in the day for the NEAXs but not so much for AC based gear.
Many of them didn't have any active cooling as the NEAX was designed to not get too hot as this was back in the 50's and installing Aircon was expensive.
Some of them are earthquake prone.

So you would need to deploy new UPS, power (if you wanted to run 240v AC gear) and Aircon and earthquake strengthening.. but after that you have a very nicely distributed datacenter that can plumb into the existing fibre POPs as all the same gear is in the same building.

nztim

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#3147956 16-Oct-2023 08:51

BarTender:

From memory there were about 70 key exchanges that Spark kept, and the rest went to Chorus.

Henderson / Airedale St / Hamilton / Tauranga / Napier / Palmerston North / Levin / Porirua / Wellington Central / Christchurch / Dunedin

there are others, basically major connection points of the OTN

Any views expressed on these forums are my own and don't necessarily reflect those of my employer.

atomeara

324 posts

Ultimate Geek

#3148008 16-Oct-2023 10:14

Telecom now Spark kept the ones below, there all the bigger exchanges,
They were at the time main handover points for ADSL, VDSL and HSNS (legacy network)
With most traffic now being UFB and the legacy network being shutdown about a 1/3 won't be handover locations from next year.

The other ~750 exchanges and ~1900 colo sites went to Chorus.

nickb800

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#3148038 16-Oct-2023 11:13

BarTender:

So you would need to deploy new UPS, power (if you wanted to run 240v AC gear) and Aircon and earthquake strengthening.. but after that you have a very nicely distributed datacenter that can plumb into the existing fibre POPs as all the same gear is in the same building.

What's the actual use case for these sorts of datacenters? Each of the big ISPs might take a couple of racks for running their core network, but beyond that? Presumably they can't compete on price with various hyperscale datacentres being built by Microsoft/Amazon or to a lesser scale Datacom/Revera/Catalyst, even if the building shell is effectively free (as large parts are no longer needed for NEAXs).

I seem to recall that when the telephone exchanges were being divvied up between Telecom/Chorus, there was this notion that we might have video CDNs with caches in every city, so being close to end users was valuable. But given the way that UFB has played out with ISPs hubbing their traffic through Auckland or perhaps Wellington/Christchurch, that doesn't seem to be an advantage to these edge data centres. Today, I think Vocus runs all of their traffic through Auckland, so easy enough to send it 2ms down the road to Westgate, rather than 1ms to Mt Eden.

gwh

73 posts

Master Geek

#3148114 16-Oct-2023 12:37

BarTender:

Many of them didn't have any active cooling as the NEAX was designed to not get too hot as this was back in the 50's and installing Aircon was expensive.

That was very much not the case. The first generation of NEAXs, the 61K series, were extremely vulnerable to high temperatures. The risk of switch failure due to overheating was very real and did happen on occasion. If there was a NEAX in place, there was also multi-stage cooling also installed. It may not do the job for a DC but it will definitely be there.

The NEAX rollout didn't start until the early 80s. Agreed, some of the suburban exchanges now being transitioned to DCs in cities would have been built to host electromechanical switches which were installed in the 50s.

concordnz

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#3148126 16-Oct-2023 13:11

atomeara:
Telecom now Spark kept the ones below, there all the bigger exchanges,
They were at the time main handover points for ADSL, VDSL and HSNS (legacy network)
With most traffic now being UFB and the legacy network being shutdown about a 1/3 won't be handover locations from next year.

The other ~750 exchanges and ~1900 colo sites went to Chorus.

Will Spark flick off the unused sites?
If someone was interested in one, what would be the best way to connect with the right people?

BarTender

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#3148128 16-Oct-2023 13:34

concordnz:
atomeara:
Telecom now Spark kept the ones below, there all the bigger exchanges,
They were at the time main handover points for ADSL, VDSL and HSNS (legacy network)
With most traffic now being UFB and the legacy network being shutdown about a 1/3 won't be handover locations from next year.

The other ~750 exchanges and ~1900 colo sites went to Chorus.

Will Spark flick off the unused sites?
If someone was interested in one, what would be the best way to connect with the right people?

I doubt it. There are the core bits of the Optical, MPLS, Mobile network in those sites.

atomeara

324 posts

Ultimate Geek

#3148246 16-Oct-2023 18:53

Spark has just upgraded Mayoral Drive recently.

Many sites are key backhaul sites for Spark and Chorus has some backhaul kit there too (backhaul wise Chorus are tending to avoid Spark sites for anything new and use there own sites)

Until recently Chorus did plan to exit all UFB handovers from Spark exchanges, however that is no longer the case and they will remain.

I would question the value of some like Hilmorton, where it has no UFB fibre going into it and copper is rapidly going.

Torbay, Mt Albert, Henderson and Howick, etc may not have huge value either from next year once the legacy handover points and copper network are removed from them but the UFB fibres for those areas go back there and while possible it would be complex and expensive for Chorus to bypass them.

I doubt there would be many for sale but I have heard the cost of up keeping some of them is a bit of a pain point for Spark at times. Napier is one that comes to mind.

atomeara

324 posts

Ultimate Geek

#3148256 16-Oct-2023 19:17

nickb800:

BarTender:

So you would need to deploy new UPS, power (if you wanted to run 240v AC gear) and Aircon and earthquake strengthening.. but after that you have a very nicely distributed datacenter that can plumb into the existing fibre POPs as all the same gear is in the same building.

What's the actual use case for these sorts of datacenters? Each of the big ISPs might take a couple of racks for running their core network, but beyond that? Presumably they can't compete on price with various hyperscale datacentres being built by Microsoft/Amazon or to a lesser scale Datacom/Revera/Catalyst, even if the building shell is effectively free (as large parts are no longer needed for NEAXs).

I seem to recall that when the telephone exchanges were being divvied up between Telecom/Chorus, there was this notion that we might have video CDNs with caches in every city, so being close to end users was valuable. But given the way that UFB has played out with ISPs hubbing their traffic through Auckland or perhaps Wellington/Christchurch, that doesn't seem to be an advantage to these edge data centres. Today, I think Vocus runs all of their traffic through Auckland, so easy enough to send it 2ms down the road to Westgate, rather than 1ms to Mt Eden.

The buildings won't need earthquake strengthening most are built like a tank. Christchurch exchange was a good example in there earthquakes.
Many were designed to withstand explosions, good old Ministry of Works days.

Chorus have a few angles, a lot of ISPs use it for there CDN caches and similar.

There also selling it as Edge compute, so close to the customers, while there are lots of data centres in Auckland, once you go to places like Hamilton, Wellington and Christchurch there are less and places like Tauranga there are basically none. Low latency edge compute is one target use case I am not sure how much uptake they have had on this.

The main reason they expanded Mt Eden is because it was full and customers wanted more racks theres.

There is still a bit of cost hauling traffic around, certainly between the North and South Islands, some larger ISPs have CDNs and caches in Christchurch and Wellington.

As for hyperscale datacentres, there not cheaper the rack cost at large existing provider in Auckland is about 30% more per rack than Chorus. Chorus are also half the price on power as there regulated on what they can markup things. The one catch is Chorus can't give you the same power per rack as the hyperscalers, we take 10kw in a full rack which they can't deliver. However the cheaper rack and power costs means we can just take a 2nd rack.

One of our key reasons for taking racks here was the location for access from our office, the CBD is bad for traffic and parking and access the North Shore can have the same issue with traffic.

If we were in another data centre we would also need to get 2 diverse transport paths which best case is about $1100 per month for 2x 10Gb waves.