IBM has been selected by Melbourne’s Victoria University (VU) to design and build the university’s first green data centre.  

The University has more than 45,000 students at 11 campuses and sites from the CBD across Melbourne’s west, and Weller says the data centre is critical to supplying educational services to all students, as well as supporting the University’s administrative functions.

“With the rapid growth in data, we needed to make sure that we stay ahead of the game, and so acquired a design and solution that would cater for our data centre needs for the next 10 years – including increased power, cooling, space, and floor load capacity.”

IBM Australia executive, site and facilities services, Malcolm Mackay, says the VU solution includes a high level of reliability, as the power and cooling systems have been designed for high availability and scalability with little or no downtime.
 
“Furthermore, the solution will help the university avoid more than 230 tonnes of CO2 carbon emissions per year,” Malcolm Mackay said, adding that the agreement demonstrated the University’s technical and environmental leadership.

Stephen Weller said the project involved IBM implementing a modular design approach to enable the University to minimise start-up energy demands from the existing site electrical supply.

He confirmed that IBM will also employ an in-row cooling solution which offers targeted cooling at the heat load source, combined with free cooling chiller plant technology to leverage the favourable Melbourne climate. Smaller UPS module sizes will be used to maximise the amount of usable power and UPS efficiency, and Weller says this will result in both “substantial energy savings and the elimination of hot spots to provide an optimum equipment operating environment.”

IBM says the solution is cost-effective to own and operate, with up to 45 per cent less power consumption than a conventional design, potentially saving more than 300000 kW per year of energy.

The agreement between IBM and Victoria University was signed last month but there’s no indication yet on when the centre will be up and running.