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The best companies in datacentre design, operation and management were recognised at the prestigious Datacentre Leaders’ Awards 2008 ceremony held in London yesterday (December 17).
The UK’s “most energy efficient datacentre” at the Elean data campus near Cambridge won the Future Thinking and Design Concept Award. The datacentre uses waste heat from a nearby bio-mass power station. 5nines/BNB’s development at the Elean data campus near Cambridge has, from the outset been designed to become Europe’s greenest and most energy efficient data centre. Utilising waste heat from the adjacent Bio-Mass power station to help drive absorption cooling to lower the energy demands to cool 350,000 sq ft of data centre, generating our own power from several gas/light oil gas engines and providing a development of 450 dwellings to be constructed in the vicinity with free heating and subsidised hot water – we believe we are coming close to achieving it. We negotiated an off-take agreement with the power station operator giving us limitless hot water at 400 C. We then made the decision to import from the grid only 25 MW of electricity, the rest being generated on site by gas engines. By feeding the gas engine exhaust flues with the water at 400 C, we now super-heat it to 1250 C, and provide for ourselves free cooling. In this way we have reduced the total energy consumption on site to 42 MW or a saving of 40%.
Fujitsu won the Innovation in the Mega Datacentre Award for its London North Datacentre. The 1,600 rack datacentre is Europe’s first to be given confirmed, official Tier III certification by the Uptime Institute for a design which delivers CO2 emission savings of 11,788 tonnes per year – equivalent to 7,000 UK homes. "Officially opened in June 2008, Fujitsu’s new 1,600 rack datacentre is Europe’s first to be given confirmed, official Tier III certification by the Uptime Institute, offering full concurrent maintainability and 100% UPS backed continuous cooling and IT systems. Yet this datacentre also breaks new ground in efficiency of build and operation. Refurbishing a former warehouse, it completed just 14 months after initial design feasibility. It has achieved, in comparison with standard designs, a 72% reduction in processing energy requirement, a 45% reduction in floor space required for back-up systems."
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office scooped two awards, one for Innovation in the Medium Datacentre and another for Leadership in the Public Sector for the development at its Hanslope Park Facility in partnership with Hoare Lea Consulting Engineers. A prestige, air-conditioned office block providing 4500m office accommodation and 490m been completed for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). The building consists of three above ground floors. It is divided into north and south blocks separated by an atrium that raises one data centre containing 200 cabinets has been designed and constructed as an integral element of the new building. The site is owned and occupied by the FCO. The operations of the facility are restricted. The project mission was to enhance the services provided by the FCO by offering improved security, flexibility for future growth, system availability and reliability whilst working to a ‘state of the art’ sustainability agenda.
London City Airport’s Modular Data Center in partnership with Red Vista won in the Innovation in the Micro Datacentre category. "The decision to implement Red Vista’s MDC solution was driven by the necessity to partner with a datacentre design & build specialist, who would work proactively throughout the project’s lifecycle; deliver an end-to-end solution, and ensure that the operational result met with the business’s evolving requirements & expectations. We quickly initiated engagement with Red Vista’s datacentre design & build team, who along with LCY qualified the high level technical parameters & business’s expectations, to enable the initial Board approval."
The Green Datacentre Award went to EDS in partnership with Norman Disney & Young and Houseman Henderson Architects for the SMC4 Datacentre near Sunderland. Recognising that cooling was the most significant opportunity for energy saving and that the mean ambient temperature in the North East of England was low, the team decided to use the cool northern air to directly cool the IT equipment and plantrooms. This approach is expected to provide an annual energy saving of about 40% compared to a typical datacentre design. "From the beginning EDS displayed a willingness to challenge convention. The extraordinary step was taken to assemble approximately 50 of the brightest minds in IT and datacentre design at the EDS headquarters in Plano, Texas. The individuals were drawn from all across the globe and included EDS board members, specialists, technicians and operators, members of the IT and equipment supply chain, the design team and industry leaders. A key aspect of the success of this strategy was the identification, calculation and acceptance of risk within appropriate areas of the business. This foresight enabled technologies not normally chosen to be considered. After much tuning, alteration and modification the final design includes eight 2.2m diameter Variable Speed axial fans for each hall used to supply air and another eight used for exhaust air, in an N+2 arrangement. A mixing chamber is also included to recirculate air to maintain conditions in the pressurised plenum below the computer equipment
Digital Realty Trust’s IBM project Paris collected the award for Innovation in an Outsourced Environment. Digital Realty Trust was able to meet the requirements through its Turn-Key Datacentre design methodology that is based upon the strengths of its proprietary POD Architecturesm. Digital Realty Trust offers two basic Turn-Key products in Europe: 1) The TKD720 delivers 720 kW of IT load and provides coverage for 500-600m² of raised floor with a 2N UPS power architecture coupled with an N+1 cooling structure. 2) The TKD1440 KW offers 1440 kW of IT load and supports 1,000-1,200m² of raised floor space and offers the same power and cooling architecture as the TKD720. IBM’s decision to lease a TKD1440 was based on the ability of the product to be sub-divided into two separate physical TKD720’s to support its upcoming client needs. Moreover, based on Digital Realty Trust’s POD Architecturesm each client’s space includes its own dedicated electrical distribution system from the transformers to the PDUs along with a dedicated generator.
Operational Team of the Year went to Morgan Stanley Enterprise Data Centres Group in partnership with Norland Managed Services and Redstone Converged Solutions. Morgan Stanley formed their global Enterprise Data Centres (EDC) group to bring together the core skill sets of the traditional Corporate Service and IT Functions to work as one team with single point accountability for the operation of the Global Data Centre portfolio. The Firm recognised that by integrating data centre FM and IT functions globally into a brand new multi-disciplinary team they could realise their strategic and operational objectives, improve synergies, service levels and resiliency as well as reduce costs. EDC operate two world-class data centres in Europe - some 40 miles apart and around 20 miles away from the financial centres of London.
Greg Metcalf of ARUP was named Young Mission Critical Engineer of the Year. Greg was part of Arup’s 200 graduate intake in 2006. "He has settled into his role quickly and has become an invaluable part of the Buildings London team that specialises in Mission Critical Facilities. Greg has shown a consistently high level of professionalism; technical aptitude, and made a significant contribution to our team with his proactive approach," the company said.
This year’s Datacentre Leaders’ Awards attracted unprecedented interest and a record number of entries and over six hundred data center professionals attended the ceremony at London’s Royal Lancaster Hotel.
Zahl Limbuwala, Chairman, Data Centre Specialist Group at the British Computer Society (BCS) oversaw the judging process. He said: “The judging panel of industry experts were rigorous in their approach and all of the awards were hotly contested. Congratulations to the deserving winners.”
See the February issue of DatacenterDynamics Focus for more details on the awards and the winners.
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