Fujitsu opens £44 million data centre

• The new data centre is a brown field development utilising a refurbished warehouse, to further reduce the environmental impact compared to a new building on green fields.
• When fully loaded the data centre will achieve a power usage efficiency (PUE) rating of 1.6 (62% DCiE)² compared to previous data centres at PUE 3.0. (33% DCiE) - this is nearly double the efficiency of previous data centres.

The data centre has been equipped with high efficiency mechanical and electrical infrastructure that offers the best return on investment for Fujitsu’s customers. The data centre’s new features will save enough electricity to power 2,000 households a year. These features include:

• Evaporation towers and heat exchangers more efficiently remove heat from the data centre systems than traditional air conditioning systems.
• Heat pumps pre-heat incoming fresh air up to operational temperatures as it enters the data centre, reusing heat extracted from the technical halls.
• Spray humidification - the technical hall air uses low energy spray humidifiers in the air inlets to the technical halls, instead of traditional steam humidification.
• Variable fans and pumps in the cooling system make a significant energy saving even when the data centre is at full capacity, by matching the cooling provided to the actual cooling needs of the data halls.
• Diesel Rotary UPS (DRUPS) maintain the electricity supply to the whole data centre when a GRID blackout occurs. DRUPS consume less electricity than current UPS systems – providing a constant saving in energy usage every year.

Additionally, Fujitsu will reduce the power consumption of the customer IT systems housed in the new data centre through an IT Optimisation Programme. By consolidating the IT systems within the data centre power consumption and cost savings of up to 50% can be achieved. When complete the IT optimisation programmes will save enough power for up to 4,000 homes each year.

In total Fujitsu’s new data centre facility and IT optimisation programmes will each year save enough electricity to power up to 6,000 homes, equivalent to 10,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide and significantly reduce the cost of IT for business.

Martin Provoost, Fujitsu Services head of data centres said: “Fujitsu’s new data centre combines high resilience and high efficiency, which is difficult to achieve as these two factors often oppose each other. Attaining high resilience requires more redundant infrastructure, which in turn consumes more energy. However, through new proven technology, Fujitsu’s London North data centre achieves both the optimum resilience level and a leading efficiency rating.”

¹ Uptime Institute Tier III rating (typically 99.98% site availability). It is the commercial optimum specification for both private and public organisations – providing a high availability data centre as a key component for non-stop computing systems. Tier III provides the best value for money with the right level of data centre resilience for the funds invested

² DCiE is the Data Centre infrastructure Efficiency measure