$40m data centre opens in Toowoomba

Australia’s first Tier III regional data centre has officially opened for business in Toowoomba.

The $40 million Pulse Data centre, built by FKG Group, is located at the 20-hectare Toowoomba Technology Park. The data centre is a co-location facility designed as a primary site to support corporate and enterprise customers; local, state and federal government; and global technology giants.

FKG Group previously said that the data centre building (DC1) would consist of 720 data racks that will be delivered over four equal stages (data halls). The facility incorporates a tri-redundant power train solution and is one of the first data centres in Australia to include lithium-ion batteries in the UPS delivery. With a designed capacity of 2.5 MW of IT load for the first building, 16-cylinder generators (1850 kVa) were required as the backup power source to the facility.

The data centre is underpinned by Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure IT platform to deliver a high-performing efficient, scalable and secure data centre fit for local and international business needs.

Schneider Electric’s Pacific Zone President Gareth O’Reilly said: “In a multiconnected world, it’s now more important than ever to protect critical information and data, so a Tier III rating is very important for the data centre’s customers.

“Our EcoStruxure platform of power, plus cooling, security and energy management solutions enable the data centre to reach that Tier rating, plus provide a physical infrastructure that can adapt quickly to future data demand driven by the digitisation of the economy and cities.”

Peter Blunt, the Pulse Data Centre General Manager for FKG Group, said: “We chose to partner with Schneider Electric on this landmark venture not only because of their global reputation and experience in the data centre market, but the innovation demonstrated throughout their Ecostruxure platform and their agility in supporting a project at this scale.”

Schneider Electric’s VP of IT, Joe Craparotta, said, “A great example of our technology in action at Pulse Data Centre is our Galaxy V-Series UPS solution for data centres, which feature long-lasting lithium-ion batteries. Pulse Data Centre is able to provide excellent power quality in demanding electrical environments, offer lower energy costs – up to 99% efficiency, and allows for local and remote management.”

Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure platform leverages advancements in Internet of Things (IoT) technology to deliver innovations at three fundamental levels:

• Connected products: In the case of a data centre, EcoStruxure collects data from all sorts of mechanical, power and IT devices, from switchgear and UPSs to PDUs, racks and in-row cooling systems.
• Edge: Enabling real-time monitoring, incident management, analysis and asset utilisation for smaller, distributed data centres that are becoming more and more critical in an IoT world.
• Analytics: This is where we make sense of all the data coming into the platform, with applications, services — including cloud-based services — and predictive analytics that help with the effective management of data centres.