Covering an area of 3,750km┬▓, Hampshire is the ninth largest county in England.

Overseeing a diverse population of 1.25 million people, including 170,000 children in education and looking after over 95,000 vulnerable residents is Hampshire Country Council (HCC).

The council resides at Elizabeth II Court, the result of an entire refurbishment of the council's 1960s headquarters in Winchester which according to the council is being cited as an example of best practice by the Carbon Trust and is also expected to secure a BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method) rating of `Excellent.'.

As part of the relocation project it located its sole data centre to Elizabeth II Court.

Mikko Green, HCC's Operations and Technical Support Manager, said: "It's very rare for us to be able to plan a data centre from scratch. So we wanted an infrastructure that was scalable, flexible and allowed us to meet best practice standards for up to twenty years."

It serves 12,000 to 13,000 council employees who are regular ICT users, and also hosts the Council's Hantsweb web site (which gets around 20 million hits a month), and those for other local authorities and voluntary bodies. It is home to 600 physical servers, and another 400 to 500 virtual ones..

For advice the council used Mace Group's ICT consultants which selected Nexans LANmark-6A high-speed screened copper cabling for its horizontal network to provide up to 10G speeds. This was chosen over fibre optic options. The 360-degree screened design claims an immunity to alien crosstalk (AXT), and says the company, it allows placement of up to three connection points within ten metres. "Proper shielding also eliminates costly on-site testing for AXT following installation, as well as expensive remedies should any difficulties be revealed. In addition, unshielded Cat 6A cabling is usually thicker and requires extra space creating patching difficulties in tight situations. Thinner, screened cables take less space, and are easier to connect," the firm said.
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Also deployed was Environmental Monitoring and Access Control (EMAC) software consisting of Power Distribution Units (PDUs) and LANsense Rack Manager. The PDUs automatically switch on/off depending on electrical need and connections to the Rack Manager, provide time/date stamped monitoring of volts, amps and sockets used, as well as automatic e-mail alerts should preset parameters be exceeded. It can also monitor cabinet temperature and humidity levels.

The overall building is also among the first in the UK to have elements largely powered by a renewable energy source ÔÇô a wind-driven ventilation system.

The council said it expected the centre's operational carbon emissions will be reduced to a target performance of 39kg CO2/m2/annum from 90kg CO2/m2/annum assessed recently.