Client Portal (Login)
The North East of Scotland Shared Data Centre (NESSDC) has been awarded the prestigious European Users Public Data Centre of the Year 2013 Award by Computer Weekly.
The £1.5m data centre project that was designed and built by Workspace Technology Ltd, is the new primary data centre for all of the North East of Scotland’s four tertiary education establishments - University of Aberdeen, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen College and Banff & Buchan College.
The massive scale of this 10 month complex and high risk project involved the relocation of 400 servers, the relocation and rewiring of 100 live network components and two full Janet racks, and all done within a live environment that required the service to be kept on for all NESSDC users.
Construction work including installing a whole new raised access flooring system, new ceilings and major external construction work, was undertaken by Workspace Technology as they applied their unique EcoDesign™ Design and Build strategy to provide the NESSDC with sustainable, energy efficient & resilient Data Centre infrastructure.
The EcoDesign™ solution included Workspace Technology’s Flexaisle® Hot Aisle Containment System synchronised with the market leading Freecool® evaporative cooling system which unlike other evaporative based systems provides close control of the data centre environment through deployment of Workspace Technology’s Atemperation™ Management System.
The Holistic EcoDesign™ deployment also included the installation of Workspace Technology’s Data Centre Generator Sets, and a comprehensive range of APC by Schneider infrastructure products, which included StruxureWare for Data Centre’s DCIM Software, which provides a single viewing/alert platform for the status and performance of the data centre
This EcoDesign ™ Solution has achieved a PUE rating of less than 1.08 according to an independent audit.
Spencer Izard, IDC Research Manager and Awards Judge, commented “This entry stood out from the others due to its shared services approach, backed by an energy efficient design, a transition that saw minimal service interruptions, and better use of infrastructure to decrease complexity and operational footprint whilst maintaining quality of service.”
This project, which was successfully completed on time and within budget, is up for a multitude of other industry awards, including the British Computer Society Data Centre of the Year 2013 Award and the Green Gown Awards 2013 for Effectiveness & Efficiency in Estate.
John Rakowski, analyst at Forrester Research, said this project “is an example of a true data centre transformation”.