FACILITIES power + cooling
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http://dcseurope.info/n/hzxx
NHS data centre welcomes
overhead…cooling A new high density data centre provides the electronic heartbeat for NHS Airedale, Bradford and Leeds’ IT services in Bradford and Airedale. The new facility is the first global installation of Schneider Electric’s InRow OA, over-aisle cooling solution.
O
ver 500,000 people in Bradford and Airedale currently use healthcare services provided by NHS Airedale, Bradford and Leeds. The local population already includes a higher than UK average number of young people, and is expected to climb to 650,000 in the coming decades. NHS Airedale, Bradford and Leeds is responsible for all the health services delivered in the local community by GPs, dentists, pharmacists, opticians, voluntary organisations and local and specialist hospitals.
The PCT’s Bradford data centre provides a number of IT services to 129 of PCT sites, including 84 GP surgeries as well as dental health, podiatrists and palliative care providers. Services supported include Sharepoint collaboration tools, various websites, e-mail including webmail, Blackberry services and telemedicine.
Prior to the installation of its new, high density facility, there had been issues with the PCT’s ageing main production data centre. The data centre was just about out of space and cooling capacity, restricting IT growth as well as the requirement for new servers to enable a more robust, efficient and scalable approach to service provision.
Although the PCT is in the midst of a server virtualisation programme which could potentially free up IT space, the existing facility was not thought to provide a suitable environment for the new IT server load. A stable and reliable data centre is critical to power and cool the high density servers selected for the existing services moving forward, as well as for forthcoming requirements including a major, 4500-seat desktop virtualisation project.
The Brief for a New Data Centre Having eliminated the possibility of upgrading the existing data centre, the PCT selected a new room in one of its office buildings as a potential site in which to deploy a new server room. However, instead of producing a specification for the new facility, the PCT
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issued a tender to five data centre design and build consultancies, passing over to them the initiative for them to come up with innovative solutions which would maximise the full capacity potential of the room. The companies bidding for the new data centre therefore had a free hand to architect the room in any way they chose in order to enable the PCT to install as much IT equipment as possible into the room, with adequate power and cooling.
However, there were two important limitations affecting the build; firstly the data centre was to be housed in a listed building (i.e., a building which has been placed on the Statutory List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest). Therefore the PCT wanted to avoid the complications of special planning requirements needed for alterations to such structures, such the installation of a suspended floor.
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