Datacentre design and build for the new digital age
GEOFF DENHAM
As business and society becomes more digitally-focused, even IT experts can struggle to keep pace with all the latest apps, devices and cloud-enabled services. From the server to the desktop, enterprise technology now marches to the tune of the user experience. This places enormous pressure on the datacentre to achieve maximum performance with maximum uptime.
Comtec Power has been designing and building complete datacentre infrastructure solutions for almost 20 years and, in that time, we’ve seen datacentres occupy an increasingly critical role in the life of every mid to large-sized organisation.
But while the IT strategies, architectural approaches and consumption models have evolved, the core requirements for datacentre design and build continue to endure. These are:
- Efficiency
- Datacentres necessarily consume a lot of energy, so it’s vital to minimise waste so that running costs are optimised. The same is true of space; making best use of available room without compromising the delicate balance between power and cooling. The added benefit of a highly efficient datacentre is the reduced environmental impact.
- Resilience
- Unplanned downtime is completely unacceptable, which makes 24/7/365 resilience a key factor in datacentre design and build projects.
- Redundancy
- The intelligent deployment of right-sized redundancy assures resilience with maximum efficiency. There are many possible redundancy configurations, and it is crucial to ensure the right level: never too little, or too much.
- Scalability
- Future scale requirements are always uncertain, especially when virtualisation offers the opportunity to rationalise servers and other IT hardware. What we do know is that data is growing exponentially, putting every organisation on a trajectory towards bigger on-demand datacentre infrastructure requirements. With so much datacentre transformation – whatever form it takes – modularity needs to be built-into datacentre design and build considerations. Without it, scaling-up (or down) can be time-consuming and painful.
Comtec Power’s accredited expertise encompasses the whole datacentre infrastructure stack, using market-leading technology from the likes of Schneider Electric and its APC InfrastruXure portfolio to deliver full design and build solutions.
Leveraging its status as a Schneider Electric Elite Partner, Comtec Power is the leading design and build partner for datacentres in the UK. Recent projects include the UK’s largest social housing provider (Sanctuary), a global research and publishing company, and the award-winning solution for Cardiff University .
Datacentre design and build results include:
- Reducing operating costs for individual customers by hundreds of thousands of pounds a year
- Maximising resilience and redundancy in line with changing business requirements
- Using sophisticated airflow modelling to right-size datacentre power and cooling
- Achieving compliance to the latest datacentre standards
- Retrofitting simple, modular solutions where appropriate, rather than ripping-and-replacing
- Future-proofing long-term datacentre investments with bespoke service and maintenance packages
And unlike other providers with a very narrow ‘facilities’ background, our datacentre consultants have an accelerated understanding of software, networking, storage, unified communications, security and many other broader IT imperatives. This explains why major IT systems integrators such as CDW have chosen Comtec Power as their preferred datacentre design and build specialist.
Contact us today to discuss your datacentre design and build needs, or read more here .
Comments are closed.