Business
By the numbers: Rackspace's UK cloud
The Slough-based datacentre is the cradle for the Rackspace's UK cloud and is currently being adapted to add further compute capacity and introduce free-air cooling to cut power use
Rackspace's datacentre in Slough has been built to balance efficiency with ease of access, as its managed hosting business requires it to offer a variety of services that include the rapid swapping out of servers.
It is also the cradle for Rackspace's UK-based cloud, and the company has plans to expand the facility by a further 17,000 square feet in August in a bid to boost its compute capacity. It also wants to make it more efficient by introducing some free-air cooling.
Rackspace keeps a vast amount of spare servers on site so that it can swap out hardware in case of failures. Photo credit: Rackspace
| Facility | Two data halls within Rackspace's prime UK facility, with a third hall in the process of construction. |
| Power usage effectiveness (PUE) | 1.7. Once the expansion is complete, this should go down to 1.59 |
| Size | Two halls of 36,000 square feet, plus an additional 17,000 square feet in August with the completion of the third data hall. |
| Racks | 1,600, with a further 830 available in August |
| KW per rack | Average of 3.5KW |
| Cooling | Direct expansion via Crac units. Cooling coils if less than 14°C |
| Hardware | Predominantly Dell, with Cisco as the lead for networking. |
| Compute capacity | n/a |
| Designed by | Hurley Palmer Flatt |
| IT power | 3.3MW, with 1.1MW to be added in August, expandable up to 3.2MW |
| Opened | June 2008. Data Hall Three due to open in August 2011. |
See more of ZDNet UK's datacentre tour.