The centre (see photo gallery right), said to be valued in the ‘tens of millions’ of dollars, is already at 60 percent occupation despite the fact it won’t be fully completed until November, according to Michael Gunton, general manager of data centre services at Fujitsu Australia.
Fujitsu has also described it as ‘the most environmentally sustainable facility of its kind in Australia’ – with state-of-the-art technology implemented from the likes of Powerpax, Stulz, Gridlogix and MGE (owned by Schneider Electric/APC).
“We were running out of floor space at our facility at North Ryde,” said Gunton.
“Back in 2006, we started looking at options for expansion in Sydney, and we found this [site] in April 2007.”
The Homebush Bay site started life as a purpose-built data centre for the Department of Social Security in the 1980s. It was later handed over to HP-Compaq in 1995, before they also relinquished the site some ten years later.
“At that stage it was an old, run-down data centre,” said Gunton.
“It had everything you’d find walking into any older-style data centre today.”
This was at odds with Fujitsu’s vision for the new centre. “We had a vision of a more efficient, green, tier-3 data centre with ASIO-level security,” explained Gunton.
However, the Japanese giant saw the potential of the site. It took over the long-term lease, and completely gutted the building in January of this year. It was the start of an 11-month long refurbishment that now nears completion.
“We were lucky it was [already] a purpose-built data centre,” said Gunton.
But changes still needed to be made to upgrade the space from its old tier-2 status to tier-3, and to make the centre as energy efficient as possible.
“In a multi-level tenancy the first thing customers think of is what if you get water damage coming through the roof,” said Gunton.
Fujitsu used its own sustainability practice to design and engineer the new centre. It also purchased a range of state-of-the-art industrial infrastructure for efficient power management, cooling and metering.
The centre uses new hybrid, air-cooled, closed water loop chiller technology developed by Australian manufacturer, Powerpax. The chillers use oil-free, magnetic compressors to achieve additional energy efficiency.
Muller dry-con pads have also been fixed to the outside of each hybrid chiller unit to achieve better coefficient performance on hot days.
“In days of high temperatures, perhaps 35 degrees Celsius or more, the dry-con pads sprinkle moist vapour around the chillers themselves to reduce the temperature of the air coming in,” said Gunton.
“The chillers themselves also run a closed water loop so we don’t have to continually top them up with water. This saves around 80 percent of the water we would typically need for the data centre.”
Fujitsu is also using Stulz computer room air conditioning (CRAC) units inside the data halls.
“They were the only brand on the market that had variable speed fan control in the device – most are either belt-driven or run at a static, fixed speed,” explained Gunton.
Both systems were purchased in part to help Fujitsu use less power while the centre ramps up to full capacity.
“The floor load is typically quite low at the start but grows over time,” Gunton told iTnews.
“While we’re running at low loads, we want to generate as much efficiency as possible.”
The data centre uses a new motion-controlled Cbus lighting system, and everything is controlled through a central Vykon building management system package.
It also adheres to ASIO-4 level security ‘including not only physical deterrents but also the processes’, said Gunton.
Additionally, the centre will soon upgrade its two MGE Galaxy 5000 UPS units to the more efficient 9000 series.
“We’ve designed this facility to be modular and upgradeable,” Gunton told iTnews.
“We didn’t want to burden ourselves with excess plant upfront, but to have the capability and capacity to expand as we grow.”Another feature of note in the new data centre is its power metering system, which monitors the energy draw and efficiency of hosted customer equipment, as well as the energy used by the centre’s infrastructure.
This information is consolidated into a software package called Gridlogix, which then calculates each customer’s consumption, cooling, power usage effectiveness (PUE), data centre infrastructure efficiency (DCIE) and emissions. Gunton said this is important for future carbon accounting and reporting requirements, as well as for effective power management.
“Most people take the power measure from the main plate,” said Gunton. “This will give them actual insight.”
The ‘basic’ equipment hosting package offered by Fujitsu measures power drawn at the customer’s whole of operations level, although Gunton said it is possible to take measurements down at the socket or circuit level if required.
Fujitsu will also use this data to offer consultancy services to customers to optimise the efficiency of what they are running.
“We’re going to meter the power, record it, show customers what their consumption and environmental burden is and offer them advice on how to reduce it,” said Gunton.
The company sees the green IT message as being a key selling point for the centre.
“I think it’s a very important message to our customers,” said Alison O’Flynn, head of sustainability at Fujitsu Australia.
“It’s around 25 per cent of our marketing message. Obviously, though, people are still conscious of price.”
Even with completion of the Sydney centre slated for November, Fujitsu is already looking ahead to another data centre it is building in Perth.
“We’re already saying we can do things better again,” said Gunton.
“For example, we’re doing a cost-benefit analysis around free cooling in Perth using the Stulz CRAC units.”
-1.jpg&w=100&c=1&s=0)
.png&w=100&c=1&s=0)
