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Cage / Cabinet

Service ownership

Owner: dc-operations (colo-pm@clouddigit.ai) — Status: GA — Last audited: 2026-05-11

Dedicated, lockable cages for multi-rack deployments — when you need physical isolation beyond a single locked rack.

What it is

A floor-bolted mesh-walled enclosure containing one or more racks (typically 4 / 8 / 16) with a single locked door. Tenant-only access; no other customer staff (Cloud Digit ops staff still have escorted access for facility events).

When to pick a cage

  • Multi-rack production with strict physical separation
  • Regulated FI with audit-mandated isolation
  • Customer wants their own under-floor cabling, ground reference, or specialised intra-cage infrastructure
  • HSM / payment-card scope where shared-floor walking is a finding

Sizes

Footprint Racks supported Floor area
Small cage 4 racks ~10 m²
Medium cage 8 racks ~20 m²
Large cage 16 racks ~40 m²
Custom 16+ Per design

What's included

  • Mesh enclosure with single locked door
  • Ceiling closure (top mesh)
  • Customer-only key/badge
  • Optional internal CCTV (your camera, your viewing — ours doesn't see in)
  • Cable tray, fibre and copper paths from cage to cross-connect MMR

Pricing

Cage-month flat rate by size + per-rack-month + power. 1- and 3-year commitments standard. See Pricing.

Operate this service

A locked, customer-dedicated cage or cabinet inside a Cloud Digit DC — physical isolation beyond a per-rack lock.

When a cage is required

  • Compliance mandate for "physical separation" (some bank, gov, defense contracts)
  • Customer wants their own security camera / access log feed
  • Multi-rack deployment with cross-rack cabling that needs containment
  • High-value gear requiring extra physical security

IAM

Role Can do
cage.viewer View cage details, environmentals
cage.dc-visitor Physical access (badge-issued, biometric)
cage.admin Manage IAM bindings, security configuration

Cage access is logged per entry with biometric + badge + photo. Available to auditors.

Sizing

Size Capacity Use
Single cabinet 1 rack equivalent Small-footprint with cage iso
2-rack cage 2 racks Standard
4-rack cage 4 racks Larger production
10-rack cage 10 racks Major footprint
Custom 10+ racks Quote-based

Cage size includes cold-aisle containment, dedicated PDUs, and optional separate UPS feed.

Security features

  • Mantrap entry (1-person-at-a-time)
  • Biometric (palm or fingerprint) at cage door
  • Camera feeds (customer-viewable on request)
  • Tamper sensors on cage walls (alerts on unauthorized intrusion attempts)

Compliance

Cage attestation report quarterly: - Access events - Tamper events (always 0) - Environmental compliance - Cage IAM membership audit

Metrics

Per cage (in addition to per-rack metrics):

Metric Healthy Alert
colo.cage.access_events_24h matches scheduled visits unexpected entries
colo.cage.tamper_alerts_24h 0 > 0
colo.cage.power_kw < contract > 90%
colo.cage.upstream_uplinks_state all up any down (redundancy)

Access scheduling

bash cd colo cage visit schedule \ --cage cage-acme-bd-dha-1-001 \ --visitor jane@acme.com \ --start "2026-05-15T10:00:00+06:00" \ --duration 4h \ --purpose "quarterly hardware refresh"

Visit requires: - Pre-registration ≥ 24 h in advance - Visitor's cage.dc-visitor role active - KYC verification on file

Day-of: visitor presents at reception, biometric verification, escorted to cage.

Self-managed network

Customer-managed networking inside the cage. CD provides: - Uplinks (2× 25GbE or 100GbE LACP) - BGP peering port (for BYOIP) - Cross-connect ports to other CD customers in the same DC

You manage routers/switches inside the cage.

Camera feeds

Optional add-on: live + recorded camera feeds inside your cage, viewable via:

bash cd colo cage camera live --cage <id>

Recordings retained 90 days. For audit, request a specific time-range download.

Service requests

For inside-cage smart-hands work, file a request with security clearance:

bash cd colo smart-hands request --cage <id> --task "swap PSU on server-04" --priority normal

CD smart-hands enter the cage with customer authorization for each visit.

Tamper alert

colo.cage.tamper_alerts_24h > 0:

  1. CD security notified immediately
  2. Camera footage reviewed
  3. Customer security contact notified
  4. Joint investigation; documented in incident report

Most tamper alerts are false positives (cleaning crew bumped the cage). Real ones are very rare in Tier-III DCs.

Biometric not recognized

Visitor arrives but biometric fails: - Old enrollment (re-enroll at badge office; takes 10 min) - Finger/palm injury → use backup biometric (palm if fingerprint enrolled, vice versa) - System glitch → manual override by DC security manager with photo ID

Access scheduled but visitor refused entry

Cause Resolution
Visit not in system (typo in name) Update via admin
KYC expired Re-verify (15 min at badge office)
Customer revoked role mid-visit Customer admin re-issues role
Beyond scheduled time window Reschedule

Cage has redundant uplinks but lost one: - Customer-side TOR switch port — your repair - CD spine port — CD repair (open ticket) - Cable fault — CD smart-hands replaces

Traffic continues on the surviving leg; bandwidth halved.

Cage at capacity

You're growing and the cage is full: - Adjacent cage available? Expand into it (cross-cage cabling) - Move to a larger cage in a different DC row - Switch to multi-cage deployment with cross-connects

CD plans expansion in 4-8 week lead time.

Audit log shows unauthorized access attempt

Someone tried to enter the cage and was refused: - Typically a wrong-cage mistake (visitor for cage-A wandered to cage-B) - Sometimes a security probe — investigate seriously

Camera feed unavailable

Camera-feed add-on customers occasionally see "feed unavailable": - Customer-portal session expired - Local network blocks WebRTC - Camera offline (rare; CD repairs)

For audit-grade access, request a recording (durable; no portal dependency).