Henry Smith, Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Crawley, has officially opened a new data centre, which is a collaboration between Rackspace, a managed cloud company, and Digital Realty, a data centre and colocation provider.
The 130,000 square foot data centre will help to meet the growing demand for managed cloud services in the UK and Europe, and has been custom-designed with strong eco-credentials.
Henry said;
“It was an honour to officially open Europe's largest and most environmentally sustainable data centre, in Manor Royal, providing state of the art high technology employment for Crawley.
“My thanks to Digital Realty and Rackspace. There have been 150 jobs created for the construction of this facility, and 60 people will be employed to run the centre.”
Henry cut the ribbon to open the 12 mega watt data centre, supplying storage to the UK and European cloud, alongside Mark Roenigk, Chief Operating Officer of Rackspace and A. William Stein, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer of Digital Realty.
Mark Roenigk, Chief Operating Officer, Rackspace commented:
“This data centre is the epitome of intelligent 21st century infrastructure engineering. We partnered with industry leaders to design and deliver one of the most environmentally friendly and reliable data centres in Europe. Our customers depend on us for their mission critical managed IT services and this new data centre furthers our commitment to delivering world class services to those customers.
“This is our tenth global data centre and this expansion will enable us to grow with our customers for many years to come. We are proud of the energy efficiency achieved with the innovative design that will become the starting point for boosting the adoption of more efficient technologies in the UK and Europe. We are honoured to operate and provide a positive impact in the Crawley community.”
This new operation is the first data centre in the UK to make use of innovative 'indirect outside air' cooling technology on this scale, without mechanical cooling, which means the overhead energy required to operate the data centre has been cut by almost 80 per cent
The Crawley data centre was designed to maximise compatibility to, and compliance with, Open Compute Project standards. By using Open Compute Project designs, Rackspace has been able to realise outstanding scalability and energy efficiency opportunities in the hardware it deploys. The data centre delivers less weight, less waste and less wattage than traditional server designs.
Customers around the world will have access to the Crawley data centre, although Rackspace anticipates that the majority of requests will come from customers in the UK and Europe.
The new data centre, which is the size of two football pitches and holds up to 50,000 physical servers, occupies a 15 acre site. The initial build was constructed in 15 months and took approximately 500,000 man hours. It provides 6MW capacity across two data suites, and will eventually comprise of four data suites with a total 12MW capacity. The site allows for further expansion up to 30MW, and a staggered build approach maximises year-on-year advances in technology and efficiency gains.
Physical security is provided at multiple layers starting with the physical perimeter fence through to personnel badge readers. There are also biometrics scanners that read the fingerprint of an individual before they are given access to sensitive areas.
A. William Stein, Digital Realty’s Chief Executive Officer, commented:
“With the addition of the Crawley site, the Digital Realty – Rackspace collaboration, which began in 2011, has been extended to a third continent. We are delighted to see Rackspace establish its new managed cloud data centre with such outstanding eco-credentials; in addition, Rackspace’s recent expansion in Sydney is accessing clean energy through Digital Realty’s Clean StartSM program.
“With competition growing for facility services across the UK and Europe, we are pleased Rackspace choose Digital Realty as a provider to collaborate on this bespoke facility in Crawley.”
External links:
Digital Realty
Rackspace