Unisys New Zealand has completed the expansion of its Kapiti data center near Wellington.
The project began in April this year when Unisys unveiled plans to expand its data center and double the capacity of the facility. A key feature of the expansion is the incorporation of a movable floating wall, which allows the interior wall of the data center to be extended outwards as client demand increases.
This modular approach is designed to restrict the space to be cooled to the area that is physically being used, limit overall energy consumption and improve resource utilisation. According to Unisys, the facility will achieve 25% power savings through adopting energy efficiency practices including a modular design and "free cooling" techniques using external cold air for cooling. "The new infrastructure design is all about scalability and sustainability.
The power it takes to cool even a few extra square meters of space is significant. By incorporating free cooling and a floating wall, we increase floor space and cooling output only as needed, thereby reducing our power consumption," said Unisys New Zealand managing director, Brett Hodgson.
As part of the expansion, new technologies will be implemented that incorporate free cooling techniques and infrastructure. These combine traditional under-floor process cooler technology with supplementary overhead cooling capable of supporting up to 2000 watts per square metre. By using a combination of different cooling techniques, the company expects to achieve over 25%percent savings in power consumption over a year. In addition Unisys plans to install rain water tanks onsite to provide cooling infrastructure in the form of humidity water feeds into the computer room, thereby providing resilience from water supply failures. Putting bad air to good use, the new infrastructure also features heat exchange options so that Unisys on site offices can be heated with the heat by-product from data centre.
The facility will be supported by a two megawatt power plant. The modular approach Unisys has adopted to providing power and cooling will see the site grow only as customer demand and need dictates for many years in the future.
"Rather than build a large, resource-hungry environment to meet as-yet-undefined customer needs, we have designed this facility to expand so that we can scale building size, power supply and cooling as demand grows," said Hodgson. The expansion of Kapiti comes less than a year after Unisys completed the installation of dual (redundant) mains power feeds from a separate sub station into the Kapiti Data Centre, which included the purchase of a second larger diesel generator. It reflects the growth in demand for high availability data centre services.