A university in Canada has turned to a modular form of data center construction to overcome space restrictions in its existing data center facility.

Spain-based AST Modular director for US and Canada Sales George Sutton said the university needed to increase space fast but wanted more flexibility with its new facility than was offered by a containerized data center.

It is now using the first installation of AST Modular’s NON ISO Modular Datacenter – which unlike most containerized data centers can have a wall removed to create a larger data center space as new modules are added.

“NON ISO MDC (Modular Datacenter) is suited to fast deployments and provides the appearance of a traditional data room when assembled,” Sutton said.

The university in Ontario chose two customized and engineered 45-foot modular data centers containing 13 racks each, offering 7kW per rack.

A containerized power module covering 20 feet provides 225kVA UPS in an N+1 configuration and a chilled water block offers 200kW of cooling, also with N+1.

The university also chose a 70 Ton Carrier Chillers for the facility.

AST Modular CEO Henry Daunert said the MDC has been a proof of concept it has worked on for a number of years, and that AST Modular is working with a number of other enterprise customers on possible deployments.

The company claims its solution can offer the same energy efficiency, prefabrication and time to market benefits of containerized solutions, with solutions starting at 12 racks with 8kW per rack and moving up to 240 racks with 25 kW per rack.

It can also customize the options, as seen with its first deployment.

They can use direct and indirect free cooling and chilled water and be built to Tier II and Tier III configurations with supporting power infrastructure if required.

You can see images from the installation below.