A modern PRS Datacentre was inaugurated in Chennai today to replace the earlier ageing facility. This new centre will serve ticket bookings for trains of Southern Railway, South Western Railway and South Central Railway zones.
Chennai’s regional datacentre, one of five located across the country, houses Passenger Reservation System (PRS), Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS), Mobile Ticketing, National Train Enquiry System (NTES) and a host of other services and applications for public and internal needs.
From the night of Saturday 28th August 2021, the old datacentre was shut down. All ticketing activities, charting activities were handled from the Disaster Recovery Site located at South Central Railway, Secunderabad. The Chennai centre finally came fully online at around 01.30 A.M on 1st September 2021 when the booting up activity was successfully executed at the new complex.
The new datacentre cost Rs. 14.1 crores and has 16 racks for servers, 10 racks for communication equipment and has the scope to accommodate future needs for the next 20 years or space for 16 more racks. The new data centre on the second floor of Chennai’s Moore Market Complex replaces the 1985 built facility in the same building near Chennai Central Railway Station.
Key Highlights of the new Chennai Passenger Reservation System (PRS) Datacentre
- UPS to cater to the entire server farm including triple redundancies
- Precision Air conditioning to maintain temperature at optimum levels.
- Automatic Fire Suppression system and VESDA based fire detection system.
- Biometric-based access control system at two levels.
- 24×7 Security with CCTV surveillance system.
- Water leakage detection system.
- Rodent Repellant System.
- Integrated Building Management System (IBMS) to monitor Environment Control, Access Control,Video Surveillance and Electrical Systems on a 24×7 basis.
- Modern plush ambience Interiors with Workstations and chairs.
- Structured LAN cabling, wifi and Public Address System.
The new complex includes rooms for servers, communication equipment, service providers and refurbished offices of Chief Commercial Manager/Passenger Marketing, Also, the complex houses the Centre for Railway Information System (CRIS), Railway Console Office, Data Base Management office and so on. General Manager of Southern Railway John Thomas inaugurated the facility in the presence of several senior SR officials.
Over the years, the old system had exceeded capacity and become congested. An upgrade was required to handle ever-increasing traffic on the system. The Chennai facility catered to thousands of counters and over 9 lakh tickets per day, including those booked on IRCTC‘s website