Feast your eyes on what may well be the data centre of the future: a purpose-built, campus-style data centre that is not only greener than its forerunners, but will help to support the rise in data centre outsourcing in general and cloud computing specifically.
Surf ‘n turf: e-shelter’s new data centre in the UK.
To be built on a brown field site at Saunderton near High Wycombe in the UK, by data centre development specialist e-shelter, it will occupy a 50 acre site and be open to business in mid-2010…[click continue reading for more on the new facility]…
Of course there is no such thing as a green data centre: data centres consume vast amounts of electricity and are not exactly low in carbon emissions, either.
But this one will be the first in the UK to comply with the gold LEED (Leader in Engineering & Environmental Design) accreditation. The facility at Saunderton has also been custom designed for the site to minimise the visual and environmental impact on the local community according to e-shelter – including the use of turf roofing and heavy landscaping.
It will also provide the high levels of physical security and operational reliability demanded by financial institutions, service providers and Internet companies alike, e-shelter said.
The data centre will deliver 100MW of power from two separate grid points, making it the only one of its kind in the UK. The gross area of the completed facility will be approximately 829,000 sq ft – the equivalent of 11 football pitches – and it will provide over 400,000 sq ft of net lettable space for UK-based or global companies.
The site is second only to Europe’s largest data centre, e-shelter’s existing facility in Frankfurt.
E-shelter completed the purchase of the site this week through its joint venture with its funding partner, PFB Data Centre Fund.
Phillip Lydford, chief executive of e-shelter UK, said: “The UK has always been an important target to break into for e-shelter as a company and we have some ambitious plans. E-shelter has worked closely with Wycombe District Council in the design and planning of the new facility, as it is important that we handle this development sensitively and as far as possible blend it into its rural surroundings.”
“The Saunderton location’s proximity to London allows networks in the capital to benefit from near real-time replication of databases in the new facility, thereby avoiding any latency problems,” said Lydford.
