Giant data centre opens in Brisbane
Giant data centre opens in Brisbane
November 20, 2008: IT infrastructure and services company Digital Sense has taken the wraps off the first stage of its multi-million dollar data centre complex in Brisbane, claimed to be the largest and highest-density facility of its kind in the world.
The first stage of the mega-complex, in Brisbane’s Kenmore district, has been built with an array of new and advanced technologies that make it as efficient as 10 similarly sized ‘traditional’ data centres.
“In today's turbulent economic climate it’s critical that Australia is able to attract and retain significant local and foreign investment,” says Digital Sense co-director Michael Tran. “Once completed, the new complex will be on par with some of the best facilities in the world, and will provide the ideal infrastructure for some of the world's biggest companies that have already expressed an interest in establishing a presence in Australia.”
Tran says the design team was determined that the potential benefits to the economy would not come at a cost to the environment.
“The complex has been specifically designed to have the lowest possible impact on the environment, exceeding all current legislated regulations,” says Tran.
“For example, unlike other data centres, it does not use water for its cooling systems. The Kenmore site will potentially save more than 50 million litres of water annually, with the larger south Brisbane site potentially saving a further 750 million litres annually. This is equivalent to 320 Olympic-size swimming pools, significantly lessening the burden on Queensland's, and Australia's, limited water resources.”
Mostly due to its highly energy-efficient power and cooling infrastructure, the complex will save in excess of 750,000 tonnes of carbon emissions annually - the equivalent of 100,000 cars. It also only needs to use one-sixth of the typical quantity of environmentally dangerous fire retardant gasses for fire suppression.
“We’ve assembled what we believe to be the best combination of high-performance, energy efficient and cost competitive IT and infrastructure equipment that makes Kenmore and its sister site, Data Centre City, the most advanced facilities of their kind anywhere in Australia,” says Daniel Ngo, co-director, Digital Sense.
“This includes supplemental cooling, power provision and protection, and rack enclosures from Emerson Network Power; 48-port gigabit switches and 10 gigabit core switches from NETGEAR and Force10 respectively; high-performance blade servers from Sun Microsystems; internet firewall technology from Check Point; internal virtual security solutions from Reflex Security; security cameras from Bosch; and biometric palm scanners from Fujitsu. We’ve also relied on local firm Arnold Electrical & Data Installations for fitting the site since day one.”
Construction is expected to start on Data Centre City in south Brisbane in 2009.