Prefab data centre for ageing IT infrastructure

Isaac Regional Council, located halfway up the Queensland coast, opted for a prefabricated data centre from Emerson Network Power to replace its ageing IT infrastructure that had reached capacity. The critical infrastructure provider designed and deployed the data centre that has already improved the council's ability to deliver government services by cutting system outages by as much as 40%.

The council builds and maintains its own wide area network (WAN), which supports more than 300 IT users across seven regional towns. With a steady growth in the number of its employees combined with major IT initiatives, the council's ageing IT infrastructure could no longer cope.

“In 2014, the council's two existing data centres had more than reached capacity, had no room for expansion and suffered shortfalls in business continuity," said Robert Kane, chief information officer, Isaac Regional Council.

The council worked with Resolute Information Technology and Emerson Network Power to develop a solution. The standalone, prefabricated data centre was chosen because it could be deployed quickly and securely.

“It was pre-built and commissioned in Brisbane and transported 1000 km to site just 12 weeks from placing the order," said Kane.

The data centre houses four server racks, two air-conditioning racks and one rack of monitoring equipment with remote capability, giving the council's IT manager remote access to the building's critical equipment for intelligent and proactive maintenance, helping to prevent any system breakdowns.

Mo Kandeel, channel director, Emerson Network Power in Australia and New Zealand, said gathering a group of specialist data centre engineers to remote locations can be costly.

“The advantage of the prefabricated data centre is that Emerson installed and commissioned all the electrical infrastructure, switchboards, cabling and pipe work off-site in Brisbane. This means no air-conditioning technicians are required to go on-site; we only needed one engineer to commission the generator on-site," said Kandeel. “The flexible design allows for both increases in compute power — without increasing heat — and future growth."

Emerson Network Power said the whole process took just four months. The council now has a modern primary data centre with its own backup power generator and fire suppression system, as well as enough capacity to cater for future growth.

Images courtesy of Emerson Network Power.