CLIENT & PROJECT OVERVIEW
A global multi-discipline engineering and construction company required a new data centre at its head offices in North London. The mission critical facility houses SAP systems. Due to the organisation’s success and growth its head offices were being extended and refurbished. As part of these works a new data centre design was required. Although the company provides engineering and construction services the IT and Facilities teams understood the benefits associated with engaging a data centre specialist to design and build their mission critical environment and Future-tech was selected.
THE BRIEF
Design and build a 20 cabinet facility with concurrently maintainable and redundant power and cooling infrastructure able to support up to 6.8kW peak draw per cabinet. The construction of the data centre’s external shell was undertaken by the client in line with Future-tech’s data centre design requirements. Once completed Future-tech carried out the installation of the mechanical and electrical services, BMS and security.
CHALLENGES AND CONSTRAINTS
The primary challenge during the project was meeting the required go live date. Due to other activities involved with the building’s extension and refurbishment, the delivery, testing and migration of new IT equipment, and systems, in to a fully operational data centre build was challenging.
Through close liaison with the client, manufacturers and third party contractors and with coordination of critical path items and activities optimised the deadline was met and the environment handed over successfully.
THE FUTURE-TECH SOLUTION
After detailed discussions with the client our data centre Designer Engineers understood the technical requirements, business drivers and constraints associated with the project.
With this information we were able to challenge the client’s internally produced data centre design and demonstrate that our proposed solution better met the project’s requirements and objectives.
The data centre design solution produced by Future-tech was more space efficient, provided more cabinet positions, delivered more power and cooling capacity and was more resilient. This was all achieved at a reduced capital cost verses the client’s internally produced design.
Future-tech Design Engineers presented the proposed data centre design to the project stakeholders and after a number of discussions it was agreed that the new data centre design solution had significant advantages.
The UPS system was designed in an N+1 configuration. The power system utilised primary and secondary systems ensuring concurrent maintainability and increased uptime. Fire suppression and security systems including CCTV and access control were also part of the final delivered data centre solution.
The UPS and cooling was modular allowing the client to grow the facility’s capacity in line with IT system expansion.
Due to the critical nature of the facility an environmental monitoring and alert system was incorporated. This system ensures any fluctuations in environmental conditions or status of critical equipment is flagged and the relevant personnel notified by email, text and auto dialler.
This data centre site is monitored and maintained by Future-tech’s Facilities Services Team. Our Data Centre Services Engineers oversee quarterly planned preventative maintenance visits, provide 24/7/365 monitoring and emergency response and ensure the environment is continually optimised.
The data centre Team provide a single point of contact and manage all third parties, visits and life cycle planning needs.