Use Case | AI Infrastructure Services

Point-to-point installation of 2,500 to 10,200 AOC cables between core switches, access switches and server racks

Short description of project

Rapid installation of AI infrastructure clusters in hyperscale data centres in less than ten days.

Another five days were used uninterruptedly for validation of the installed cables and connections, including error checking.

A total of seven installation projects were carried out at various European locations: 2x Paris, Warsaw, Milan, Madrid, Bergamo and Zurich.

A team of two technicians and one project manager worked continuously on-site on each of the projects – from final verification through to acceptance by the customer.

Communication with the customer / reporting

The customer was kept informed of the progress of the project through daily on-site or remote meetings. The progress report was based on a prespecified form provided by the customer and contained information about the defined key indicators, e.g. the quantities of cable laid, pulled, connected and installed.

Communication and coordination: The customer had a range of sites in various European countries, i.e. Spain, Italy, Poland, France and Switzerland.

This posed considerable demands in terms of logistics and coordination. This was because each site had its own requirements or its own specific layout depending on the locality. The positioning of the hardware was different in each case and the distances to cabinets or ducts varied from site to site. Each local operational team used slightly different workflow variants. In some cases, expectations regarding the acceptance criteria also varied. These had to be discussed again and renegotiated each time.

Time pressure: The customer asked us to guarantee delivery within ten days and to dimension the teams to cope with this workload in order to rule out any possibility of it being in breach of its contract with its own customer.

Concrete project description/requirements (from Rosenberger OSI’s perspective)

A company operating in the hyperscaler sector contacted Rosenberger OSI because it wanted to conduct a cabling project which it had itself been commissioned to perform by another hyperscaler. This hyperscaler needed support during the installation of state-of-the-art GPU clusters in its white spaces/data centres throughout Europe.

During the conduct of the project, Rosenberger OSI acted as the interface between the customer and its own end customer.

The Service Level Agreements for the installations were non-negotiable as each of the installations had to be completed within ten days. To ensure this goal was met, the teams worked in shifts with up to three shifts per day.

An additional five days were allowed for validation. During this period, all the ports and cables that had been defined during the conduct of the project were checked. Validation was performed together with the end customer (Microsoft) and a third-party provider that made automated reports available.

Validation was performed as follows: Every few hours, a report was initiated via the ports to be verified and generated automatically. This report indicated whether ports were operating or were in an unclear or, for example, deactivated state. These ports were then checked. To perform the check, the ports marked as faulty, offline, etc. were physically examined and verification continued until they glowed green to show they were active again. A new verification report was then initiated.

The feedback from the customer then confirmed whether or not the implemented measures had changed the operating state and the port was functioning again.

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