Resolute IT wants to end outages for Redland City Council with modular Vertiv data centre

Queensland-based Resolute IT is gearing up to help a local council combat IT outages with a new data centre deployment this month.

The Vertiv partner will help deploy a containerised data centre into a purpose-built, elevated facility at Redland City Council. Intense weather events are currently causing up to two outages per year at the local government site, which leaves Redland’s 150,000 citizens cut off from services including utilities, animal management and libraries.

Vertiv’s micro data centre solution will condense the council’s IT infrastructure into a 10-rack unit and free up between 150-200sqm of space at the council’s offices. The solution is also expected to generate up to 40 percent in electricity cost savings.

Resolute IT’s Bill Osborne told CRN the modular data centre solution was developed in consideration the council’s needs and situation.

“From a business perspective this meant understanding the costs of refurbishing an existing facility, comparing the same with a cloud-based solution or taking a modular approach,” he said.

“Cloud was discounted as the carriage services did not currently meet council requirements. The modular solution presented the best option as it could be deployed quickly and, if necessary, extended at a future time.

“Placement of the facility required a strong collaboration between council and Vertiv engineering teams, who assessed issues ranging from rainwater run-off to concrete pads on which the facility stands.  Interestingly, the facility has been engineered to accept the use of solar power, which will make it one of the greenest facilities in the country.”

Glynn Henderson, Redland City Council chief information officer, said the council was looking to make the most of the move.

“Outsourcing the management of our data centre will enable our team to start focusing on smart city initiatives, which is something we’re building towards,” he said.

“We haven’t defined what that’s going to mean exactly yet, but we’re looking at IoT, how we can make our utilities management systems smart and innovation hubs to support entrepreneurs and small businesses in the community.”

Osborne said the new data centre gave the council options for the future.

“As a modular capability Resolute believes that the facility can be extended to incorporate more racks and greater compute as demand changes. Secondly it can be engineered to accept a variety of power sources, including renewable energy sources,” he said.

The project will mark the third micro data centre deployment Resolute IT and Vertiv have embarked on.

 “There’s plenty of hype about smart cities, IoT, etc. But it’s important to consider what infrastructure you need to pull that off,” Vertiv ANZ managing director Robert Lindsell said. “You need something scalable, secure, robust and with as little risk of outage as possible. Redland City understands this and they’re taking the steps now to make sure they can do the exciting part the right way later.

Vertiv was spun out Emerson Network Power in 2016 when the company was acquired by Platinum Equity and a group of investors for US$4 billion.