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Inside Dell's first global deployment

The first of several Tier 5 plans to build.

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Dell chose Tier 5 as launch partner for its third generation modular data centre. Tier 5 has leased 4000 square metres of space in a former Mitsubishi car manufacturing plant in Adelaide, South Australia, with access to a 25mW substation and natural gas on-site.

Tier 5 founder Marty Gauvin addresses analysts, journalists and potential customers.

The unveiling. Dell claims there was only a limited market for its fully-containerised pods, so it redesigned its modular data centre to look something a little more like this...

This is the "IP Pack" - essentially a hot aisle contained server room that connects to a power module . Up to four of these can be attached to each power module.

Dell's modular design includes a 54RU rack that can slide in and out of the module with relative ease, with hot air pushed into the modular plenum on top of the racks.

Now we're looking at a power module. One of these can power four "IP packs".

The point of the new design is that these power packs are sold at various levels of redundancy - you could lift out a Tier II level power pack out and slot in a Tier II with a little more ease than in traditional data centres.

The old Mitsubishi plant conveniently features a crane on steel rails to allow Tier 5 to lift in "packs" of server or plant modules and click them together. Its like lego, Dell said. Pretty expensive lego.

Dell's new modular data centre design features a mix of free cooling, evaporative cooling and close-loop chilled water. Here you can see the filters on the side of the data centre for free cooling. Facilities managers can switch between free cooling and chilled water in just over two minutes.

The control panel. Lots of automation involved...

The control panel.

A better look at an IP pack.

Ignore the glass panel - that's just there for today's showcase. Usually it would be a wall.

Tier 5 has already organised fibre connectivity to the networks of Optus, Telstra and NEXTGEN, with Internode and others signed on to provide connectivity by early 2011.

Dell took the opportunity to show off some of its latest servers.

This isn't customer gear, just some blinking lights so that we can assume the data centre is operational. Tier 5 is the first site in the world to turn those lights on, but Dell claims to have a long pipeline of customers around the world lining up to do the same.

Peering into the cage.

Some Dell kit. When you start packing in blade servers, the computational power available in one modular fitout gets compelling. But Tier 5 claims you could fit anything up to a mainframe in here.

Now let's take a closer look inside the hot aisle of the IP pack.

Power comes up through the floor, with fans overhead.

Heat is generated low and rises up through the aisle.

Power piped through the floor. We're looking at a facility that could handle 15kW per rack on average, peaking at 30 kW.

Yep.

Looking up at one of four fans. We turned these five horsepower fans up close to 100 percent to feel the blow. It would take some pretty intense heat to require their use at that level.

Tier 5's facility will be only a small fraction of this huge manufacturing plant, which just about extends further than the naked eye can see. Its one of few data centres, says founder Marty Gauvin, "that you can drive a car into."

This might provide a clue as to why an old car manufacturing plant would be attractive to data centre builders...

Even the bathrooms are modular...

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Tier 5 launches modular data centre

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Inside Dell's first global deployment

The first of several Tier 5 plans to build.

Linked Articles

Related articles

Southern Cross inks contract for 400-terabit subsea cable linking Australia and New Zealand

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Most popular tech stories

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Orica to set new workforce systems live in Australia in July

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