Datacenter.com, a global provider of carrier and cloud-neutral colocation data centre services, has been nominated by Datacloud Europe under the ‘Excellence in Data Centre Architecture and Design’ award category. The winner of four nominees for this data centre architecture award will be announced at the Datacloud Europe 2018 event to be held in Monaco in June.

 Datacenter.com’s AMS1 data centre, a facility part of a planned targeted global roll-out of large-scale colocation data centres that welcomed its first customers in November 2017, makes use of a unique indirect adiabatic cooling setup, as well as the latest Schneider Electric UPS technology. Datacenter.com has uniquely positioned its highly modular cooling infrastructure directly under the raised floor, with a height of 4.7 meters underneath an aisle containment solution with hot-aisle setup.

The Amsterdam facility has been nominated for the ‘Excellence in Data Centre Architecture and Design’ award category together with Kao Data, Altice Portugal and WestfalenWIND IT. One of these four data centre companies will be selected as an award winner during the Datacloud Europe 2018 award ceremony in Monaco, June 12-14 2018.

Datacenter.com’s architecture

 “The first colocation facility commissioned by Datacenter.com, located in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, features a truly unique data centre architecture,” comments Jochem Steman, CEO of Datacenter.com.

“Part of our global roll-out of data centres in select markets worldwide, this new facility in Amsterdam is engineered according to an innovative data centre design with clear objectives – to reduce operational costs; to minimise our carbon footprint; and to offer highly flexible colocation solutions including power and network infrastructure.”

Datacenter.com uses a delta T (temperature between the data hall and the hot aisle) of 11-21°C, and combines this with an airflow of 2-5m/s. “This is a very low airflow rate,” adds Jochem. “In our Amsterdam data centre, this results in a maximum absorption of the hot air. Our unique setup has resulted in a minimisation of cool air loss while providing short air circulation, therefore significantly reducing the power needed in AMS1 while creating an ultra-low calculated pPUE of 1.04.”

To achieve maximum resilience, reliability and security levels, all critical data centre infrastructure is installed outside the data hall in AMS1 so there’s no need to enter the data hall for maintenance. Water supply for the data centre cooling solution is also located below the floor, so the data centre roof is empty. This will prevent leakage from happening or potentially damaging customer equipment.

Modular cooling units, Schneider Electric UPS

Datacenter.com works with highly modular and relatively small cooling units. The cooling areas underneath the raised floor are directly below the corridors with hot-aisle setup. Datacenter.com pushes the hot air down towards the cooling engines, enabling the company to cool high density 54U, 11kW+ cabinets (from Schneider Electric) with a slow airflow without any use of compressors.

“These highly modular, small cooling units provide us with a granular cooling infrastructure designed for the highest operational and energy efficiency levels,” says Jochem. “The design allows Datacenter.com to cool high-density 54U 19in cabinets which are fully loaded with servers without any problems. The flexible cooling technology also provides for quick replacement and expansion options of cooling units when needed. This is significantly saving operational costs for Datacenter.com and our customers.”

Schneider Electric’s newest Galaxy VX solution was selected as the central Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) platform for Datacenter.com AMS1. “We have been the first in the Netherlands to use this innovative UPS platform from Schneider Electric for our data centres,” continues Jochem.

“It actually plays an important role in our overall efforts to reduce energy consumption. The average efficiency of a UPS is about 94.5%, meaning a waste of 6.5%. To reduce this overhead, we evaluated a variety of UPS solutions available in the market and ultimately decided to select the newest Schneider Electric Galaxy VX solution as the central UPS platform for Datacenter.com AMS1.”

“The Schneider Electric Galaxy VX solution helps to reduce power usage overhead in AMS1 to less than 1% in eco-mode, providing significant energy savings and also efficiency and significantly enhanced reliability in UPS operations,” Jochem concludes.

“A calculated pPUE figure of 1.04 as a result is a very low thus highly energy efficient figure being achieved. This will set the Datacenter.com Amsterdam AMS1 facility apart from the rest in Amsterdam and beyond in the European data centre market. It will also add to the innovative strength within the data centre market on a wider scale, as we’re planning to roll-out best-in-class colocation data centres worldwide.”

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