New Zealand Utility Finds a Prefab, Modular Data Center is Just the Fix for its Data Center Expansion
Tuesday July 12, 2016
Prefabricated, modular data centers are landing Down Under.
The New Zealand-based utility company Northpower launched a portable, prefabricated modular data center – specifically a Schneider Electric SmartShelter modular data center.
The data center was designed in partnership with Schneider Electric to expand Northpower’s data center capacity, while dealing with some thorny constraints. Northpower is a growing company with a number of business interests. In addition to operating as a wholesale electric power company, it also offers fiber optic network connectivity and has a utility design and construction operation.
All of that, in particular the plans to get deeper into offering Internet connectivity via its fiber network, was putting strain on its data center operations. But the company had no more room inside its data center to add capacity, according to Deepak Veerasamy, IP Architect and Technical Manager for Northpower (who appears in this video from a local New Zealand TV station).
Working on conjunction with Schneider Electric, which has built similar data centers in various other areas of the world, the company hit upon the prefabricated, modular data center option. Over the course of 12 months the two firms worked to design the data center, which is housed in a 20-foot portable module. Once the design was complete, it took just eight weeks to build and deploy.
For Northpower, and Schneider Electric, the partnership is par for the course.
“It’s part of what we do in terms of finding good partners in the technology space,” said Nikki Davies-Colley, Chair of Northpower, in the video. “It’s actually enabled us to set up something that’s far superior,” compared to what the company could’ve built inside its data center. “It’s fantastic.”
“It’s been a long road. We’ve been looking at upgrading our data center here for a long time and just trying to f...