World’s First Data Center Container Park

David LucasCPD Q2 2012

Natural Free Cooling(NFC) & Modular Data Center

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Power and cooling

• IT containers that can host up to 30 racks

• 200 kW of maximum power

• Everything is cooled with NFC

• NFC is Natural Free Cooling, a very efficient cooling system

• It gives a PUE of 1.15 to this data center

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Natural Free Cooling

• It is a patented cooling system of AST

• It is easily attachable to an ISO container

• Only uses free cooling till 24 ºC

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Natural Free Cooling(2)

• No cross contamination(IT isolated)

• Efficient hot/cold aisles distribution

• Humidity control

• Vertical and horizontal installation

• Passive air to air exchanger

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Natural Free Cooling(3)

• It uses what’s called ‘evaporative cooling’

• It is an efficient way of cooling and justrequires water

• The IT module works like a normal data center, with cold and hot corridors

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Natural Free Cooling(4)

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Natural Free Cooling(5)

• The heat that has been exchanged inside isexhausted through outside pipes

• It also use fans constantly regulated withoutside and inside temperature sensors

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Placement

• Placed in a car park in Denmark

• Built by AST Modular(Barcelona, Spain)

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Placement(2)

• The data center is divided in 2 sites

• Constructed for IBM and financial activities

• The second place has all the containerstogether, without any partition wall

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Equipment(entire facility)

• Seven 40’ IT containers

• Seven 10’ Natural Free Cooling containers

• Four 20’ container housing diesel generators

• N+N electrical design and N+1 cooling design

• SCADA interface to control more than 400 sensors for module

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Equipment(2, IT modules)

• Racks mounted in a rail system(commontechnique in modular systems)

• Reachable back side and front side of theracks inside a container

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Equipment(3, power modules)

• 2 UPS with dedicated batteries

• 20 minutes of backup time

• Electrical switch boards also replicated

• Supply power to the other modules, like the IT and NFC cooling modules

• This datacenter is Tier 3 level

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Equipment(4, security)

• Modules equiped with VESDA, very earlydetection system

• Gas to extinguish fire

• Temperature, relative humidity and pressuresensors

• SCADA system controls sensors and sendsignals to fans and cooling systems

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Benefits of modular design

• Fast deployment, 12 to 18 weeks vs 12 to 24 months for traditional

• AST can deliver a ready to use data center toany place of the world

• Simplify complexity and risks associated totraditional construction

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Benefits of modular design(2)

• Reduced OPEX:

– 20% to 40% improvements in Energy Efficiency

– Temperature easier to control in less space

– Natural Free Cooling is very efficient and avoidshazards from contaminated air

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Benefits of modular design(3)

• Reduced CAPEX:

– No dedicated building is needed(just a car park)

– Expand and build as you need

– We can even stack containers

– Plug & Play thanks to ready to be installedmodules

– Includes all the critical infrastucture needed for a 24/7 data center

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Another example

• The Thor Data Center

• Located in Reikiavik, Iceland

• Possibly the most efficient data center

• Thanks to the weather conditions and the NFC system, Thor can achieve a PUE of 1.07

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Another example

• It gives service to more than 20 million clients

• Famous because Opera uses it as its data center

• It is the result of the advertisement thatIceland is doing of its country as a perfect data center place

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Conclusions

• Big enterprises likeMicrosoft, Google, HP, IBM, etc. are alreadydeploying this kind of data centers, so it mustbe the way to go

• Modular and container data center are lesscomplex, more efficient and adapts to smalland big designs.

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Conclusions(2)

• The old named AST Global has even changedits brand name to AST Modular

• They really think the future is the modular data center, creating new technologies like theNFC system that has bring them to the top in data center deployment companies

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