Inside a datacentre factory
Summary: BladeRoom's datacentre factory, located just east of the Welsh border, is where the company assembles, tests and calibrates its datacentre modules, which are shipped to companies around the world
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BladeRoom datacentre
BladeRoom has been in the business of building and selling datacentres for four years, putting to work its expertise gained over 20 years of making self-contained facilities for the healthcare and food sectors. Its containers have helped Capgemini achieve a high level of efficiency with its Merlin datacentre, located in Swindon.
In March, when ZDNet UK visited the factory — located in Mitcheldean, Gloucestershire — BladeRoom was in the process of assembling modules for datacentres for Australian distributor Metronode. The six facilities, which have a combined 22,000 square feet of space, will be set up in Perth, Melbourne and Sydney.
To get an idea of the design process, ZDNet UK followed the path that components take through the factory as they are assembled. The first stage is the assembly of the floor (right) and ceiling (far left) of each module.
It takes one day for the floor section of a module to be mated with the ceiling module via struts and to have its floor panelled with wood, according to Barnaby Smith, BladeRoom's head of communications.
Photo credit: Jack Clark
See more of the datacentre tour on ZDNet UK.
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