Data center developer ServerFarm has won DCD's Data Center Modernization Project of the year for the LON1 modernization project. The award was sponsored by CEEDA.
The project focused on unlocking trapped capacity and increasing overall performance. The acquisition of a 120,000 sq ft, 10.5MW data center in Feltham, London was the starting point for the innovative project. The sole occupant was a major telecommunications provider, who wanted to reduce the substantial capital investment required to maintain the data center's effective performance.
ServerFarm was able to execute a complex capital investment strategy, along with a newly optimized operations management model with zero interruptions to performance, and no downtime. Partner i3 Solution provided expertise in capacity optimization and modernization for the design. The design enabled a large increase in capacity on the multifloor facility, and replaced aging or missing equipment to modernize the facility and ensure it would function to its greatest potential.
Sponsored by CEEDA, a leading provider of energy efficiency certification for data centers, the award celebrates innovative approaches to modernization projects of data centers.
Project explained
The modernization efforts in design, deployment and operation were focused on upgrading a site to be more than capable of efficient delivery of power densities that are aligned with modern workloads. The facility was brought up to modern standards, delivering greater power on a smaller footprint, saving on space, power and operational costs. The clients at the LON1 data center have benefited, with significant savings, greater environmental flexibility. Future upgrades will allow easy easy addition of capacity and a quicker response to workload and customer demand.
The upgrades took place in three key phases:
- Initial capital investment in electrical and mechanical infrastructure
- Implementation of ServerFarm operations model and incorporation of onsite personnel
- Securing and installation of new 3.5MW tenant
This demonstrates how modernization projects unlock trapped potential, and can optimize data center operations to increase the overall performance and financial viability of data centers.
Proof of Innovation
ServerFarm’s processes allow it to take all physical assets and return them as fully realized virtual services. Data centers that are managed and run like cloud services free human resources to perform other value added tasks, and enable CIOs to focus on expansive digital strategies.
Key to the innovation process are predictive analytics, which are utilized to help create an efficient operational environment at a component level, across a site or across multiple sites and cloud platforms. Maximizing asset utilization through accurate forecasting allows ServerFarm to gain insight into available capacity across on-premise, colocation or cloud data centers. This allows data center managers to operate and deliver cloud-like services to businesses through fast, efficient and informed decision making.
Finally, the physical asset upgrades allows the data center’s physical infrastructure to run at an optimal level. A number of upgrades to chilled water circuits, system air management and more led to reduced overall energy consumption, increased operational efficiency without downtime, and most importantly without compromising the live customer load.
