eBay reported total transactions of approximately $60 billion in goods, which translates to almost $2,000 per second.
The company began a strategic infrastructure project called Topaz in 2010, which would increase the stability of eBay's data centers and enable further growth. Topaz, located near Salt Lake City, Utah, was the first data center the company built from the ground up and also marked the beginning of a project to reduce eBay's use of co-located data centers while simultaneously reducing its owned facilities. Furthermore, management was interested in a single eBay data center to maximize efficiency by tailoring capacity and availability to the specific needs of its core business.
eBay worked with RTKL, a global design firm that provides services to deliver comprehensive, customized design for mission-critical projects. The Topaz facility served as a testing ground for development focused on the design principles of reliability, maintainability, sustainability, and efficiency. As a result of the design and construction efforts and subsequent energy savings, the Topaz facility achieved LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold certification in 2010.
To provide the high availability (Tier IV design) that eBay required, and to minimize redundant switching and generator plant requirements, a ring bus with six automatic transfer switches was specified at Topaz. The Tier IV design requires fault tolerance not only for the distribution equipment but also for the controls. A generator control switch was acquired from Russelectric. The Russelectric team pre-tested, qualified, and implemented the GE Quad PAC redundant control system on the project.
The Quad PAC solution features "Intelligent Redundancy," an algorithm that constantly calculates the relative availability of the system in real time and provides predictive analytics on key input variables. A quad redundancy control system has one primary controller and three synchronized backup controllers. It leverages Ethernet I/O-based devices that can arbitrate control of any one of the four controllers in the system. If the primary controller, or any of the system components, fails, the system identifies the best backup controller to take over, providing the system with the greatest capacity to withstand the next sequence of multiple or cascading system failures.
The Quad PAC controlled switch was designed with a voting system where three inputs are sent to the PLC system. The highest of the three determines the device's status. This helps reduce wiring problems, loose connections over time, and the impact of human error, which accounts for approximately 60% of failures in a data center.
