Tier 5 mixes hot air, gas and Dell

Beverley Head
Wednesday, 10 November 2010 17:03

IT Industry - Market

Adelaide based data centre specialist Tier 5 is using Dell technology as the foundation for the first in a series of multi tenant data centres - and has signed a deal with energy company AGL to conduct a feasibility study into how gas or renewable energy could be used to generate power for the data centres.

Tier 5 yesterday unveiled the prototype of its facility being built at Tonsley Park in South Australia, which uses Dell's modular data centres. This is intended as the first of three Tier 5 data centres initially slated for Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane. 

It's the first data centre company in the world to roll out Dell's third generation modular units and the Adelaide facility will go live next year.

CEO Peter Wildy dismissed concerns that the company had chosen the notoriously hot spot of Adelaide to launch its first data centre. Although Adelaide last year endured a run of almost a week of 40 deg C heat or higher, Mr Wildy said that there were on average fewer than 150 hours a year when temperatures topped 35 deg C.

He said Adelaide was in fact the perfect location for Tier 5 to start its regional capital roll out as neither Equinix nor Global Switch (the giants in data centre operation) had a presence in the city.

While heat isn't a concern, power is.

Mr Wildy explained that said the plan was to develop a series of multi tenant data centres with a power rating of up to 9 Megawatts, and then rent out 1-2MW slices to ISPs, integrators or telecommunications companies which could then on-sell services to retail customers. 

As far as power is concerned the Adelaide site has a 25MW substation on site, and an existing gas supply. Mr Wildy said that the organisation had signed an agreement with AGL already to conduct a feasibility study regarding the use of gas generated electricity.