Keysource, the data centre design and build specialists, has commenced work on a new state-of-the-art data centre for leading cloud computing experts brightsolid. The centre represents a £5 million investment and will be located at the Aberdeen Journals’ Lang Stracht site.

Detailed planning is underway with the data centre build scheduled to commence during October 2014 and the facility due to open in April 2015. The 2200 sq. m. site will initially comprise 210 high-density racks with capacity of 30 kW per rack. It has been designed by Keysource to expand to twice this size, allowing for storage of 400 Petabytes of data. 

The facility has also been designed to achieve an annualised Power Usage Efficiency (PUE) of 1.25. This will make the data centre substantially greener than the industry standard and on a par with the highest performing data centres including that of other leading cloud providers.

The design incorporates Keysource’s innovative cooling solution, ecofris, which is based on an optimised chilled water system and allows for flexible, efficient and resilient data centre cooling. ecofris employs through wall airflow and ceiling return with integrated pressure and temperature controls. This indirect recirculating free cooling solution is free from the limitations of a direct fresh air system yet delivers a comparable annualised PUE.

The data centre will provide a large-scale digital asset compatible with a variety of business sizes within both the public and private sector in Aberdeen and allows for connectivity across the UK and globally.  For the energy industry, the centre will link Aberdeen to the world’s other major energy cities.

Mike West, Managing Director, Keysource said: “We are delighted to be working with brightsolid to develop this high performance facility in such an exciting market. We’ve been able to bring our experience of working with organisations across all sectors but particularly within Oil & Gas to provide a highly efficient, flexible solution which caters for the latest high density IT.”

Richard Higgs, CEO, brightsolid, said: “Aberdeen is the Energy Capital of Europe, and as such requires a global technology link for the market.  We see our new Tier III state-of-the-art Aberdeen data centre as an opportunity to help position the city as a global tech hub. Keysource has designed the facility to the highest technical spec. It will feature the company’s ecofris cooling technology and employ a full data centre monitoring system including environmental, plant, power and PUE monitoring.”

ENDS