Business-critical electrical supply continuity solution for NZ ISP

ICONZ, one of New Zealand's first internet service providers, is implementing power protection and cooling solutions from Emerson Network Power to ensure business-critical continuity at its newly built data centre in Auckland.

The new data centre extends ICONZ's existing hosting services infrastructure, allowing it to provide solutions to customers that include managed services, web hosting, dial up and broadband internet, fibre-optic and frame relay transport, email and eCommerce services via both wireline and wireless internet connections for home and business.

"Our data centre business is growing rapidly, and we're already two-thirds full after only 12 months of sales - and that's including the new data centre," says Sean Weekes, ICONZ COO. "To facilitate this growth, power and cooling systems had to be very reliable and scalable so that we could add, for example, process cooler modules to provide additional cooling as we filled the space."

Weekes says that critical power and cooling are two of the three legs (the third being network infrastructure) that are required for a modern data centre: "All three are utterly vital for stability, scalability and reliability. Insufficient power or cooling will result in, at best, cessation of sales and interruption of cash flow and growth, and at worst, failed equipment due to thermal issues caused by excessive heat, or outages and dead equipment caused by power overloads. Downtime is not an option for our customers, which is why we ensure our facilities are protected by proven power and cooling technologies."

Emerson's solution is based on Emerson's Liebert PeX precision environmental control system and two Liebert NX 80 NeXt-generation UPSs. A third UPS is to be added, plus an additional PeX unit. Emerson is also working with ICONZ to upgrade the building's electrical reticulation and develop another floor for dedicated high-density loads.

"We've had 100% up time of the network core ever since we went live with the new data centre, and are in the process of reinforcing our infrastructure for further growth," says Weekes. "Our biggest challenge is to ensure that both the power and cooling can be solidly provided, yet be flexible enough to deal with density, which can vary from a rack full of SAN and blade servers, down to a rack full of tower desktop cases lying on their sides. Emerson has been able to help us with all of this in a timely and professional manner."