Upcoming work at Vocus Auckland – Albany (akl2)

Vocus has been in contact and has requested that we move racks! This will take place as soon as the new rack is delivered and our MTP structured cabling + dual-power is ready for use. At this site, we initially deployed hardware in the shared community rack, but as we grew and the site evolved, we moved our 100G hardware to a dedicated half rack which has continued to be our main presence since. However, there are still a few customers in the shared rack hanging off a legacy 48x 10G port device.  

A simple three-step process is underway to migrate everything: 

Step one 
Migrate any core links out of the shared rack to go via our existing MTP structured cabling from the OFDF directly to our current dedicated rack. For us, this work was completed on Monday, 29 August 2022 (https://status.ix.nz/incidents/2hdzwm79xqr1) and went well as expected with no issues.  

Step two 
Complete an audit of each existing customer in the shared rack and determine if we can migrate them to go via the existing structured cabling system. This is currently underway by the DC, and once verified, individual members will be notified of an estimated 10min outage of their 10G port as we migrate it to our dedicated rack into our 100G switch. Once completed, this will allow us to vacate the shared rack and decommission legacy hardware – WOOHOO!  

Step three 
This step is pending rack readiness which is expected to be around mid-October, and involves migrating all customers to the new rack in one fell swoop! All affected members will receive an outage notice two weeks prior to the commencement of work including details of what to expect as works are completed. Spare hardware is ready for this so that it will be a simple config clone, shut down the existing device, re-patch the MPO connector ends of the structured cabling at the OFDF to our new MTP cables toward the new rack, and just like magic, it will all come back up! 

It’s a simple process, but you must expect the unexpected. Rest assured, this is being planned meticulously to account for the unforeseen, and we will have techs onsite to resolve any immediate issues in addition to a large outage window to give the slack needed to do it right the first time!