Modular Datacenters; a day in the park.

A financial services outsourcing firm in Denmark has implemented a data park comprised of AST Modular datacenter containers that supplements existing brick and mortar structures and results in a virtual datacenter with over 9000 square meters of floor space over two physical sites.

The data park consists of more than 20 containers, with seven 40' containers dedicated to IT equipment and seven 10' containers making use of AST's Natural Free Cooling, an indirect air-to-air cooling technology designed by AST for modular installations. It uses 100% free cooling with dry bulb temperatures below 20 degrees centigrade, making it an excellent solution for the Danish environment. AST, based on their experience with these containers, expects a PUE of 1.13 for the overall data park computing ecosystem. The installation also includes three 40' containers that house the power components as well as the backup cooling systems (the system uses a traditional chiller should ASHRAE cooling standards not be able to be met with their NFC systems. With the cooling and IT containers maintained separately, no outside air is ever directly introduced into the IT equipment containers, limiting the chances of external contamination.

To finish off the completely modular datacenter model the park also contains four 20' containers that house the diesel backup generators.  To wit, you end up with a complete datacenter that is made up of a mix of IT and infrastructure modules that can be upgraded and, should the need be, repurposed or reconfigured with the addition or subtraction of the appropriate modular component.

It would seem that AST has implemented, if not the Holy Grail of the modular datacenter community, at least an excellent reference model that shows to full advantage what can be done with the idea of a modular datacenter.