Modular data centre for European ‘trusted cloud’

As a growing proportion of organisations in Europe tend to outsource IT infrastructure to the cloud, a company like Cegeka flourishes by providing hybrid cloud services from their highly secured private data centres. The recently established flagship data centre in Geleen, The Netherlands, adds to the existing data centre in Hasselt where Cegeka has its headquarters located. The new data centre has a calculated Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 1.14 - an extremely energy efficient figure. From these data centres in Hasselt and Geleen, Cegeka’s ‘ trusted cloud’ solutions are delivered throughout Europe.

“When our customers choose to outsource their IT infrastructure to the cloud, safety and the ability to stay in control are extremely important,” says André Knaepen, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Cegeka Group. “Cegeka has been responding to customer demand by establishing privately owned and highly secure data centres. Our new data centre in Geleen is another example of this effort, providing organisations in a wide variety of European countries with optimal conditions for safeguarding the availability of their applications.”

TASKFORCE

ICTroom, a pan-European data centre integrator with it’s headquarters in The Netherlands, was responsible for implementing this new facility for Cegeka, while Minkels was selected to deliver its aisle containment (Next Generation Cold Corridors®), Varicon® racks and VariconPower® PDUs.

“ICTroom works with all kinds of data centre brands,” says Johan Claes, sales director BeLux, ICTroom. “In this case, a taskforce with people from Cegeka was set up for market comparison and evaluation of all solutions available. This taskforce also visited several data centres for benchmarking purposes. In the end they concluded that Minkels is the best data centre vendor to meet the high set requirements of Cegeka.”

SECURITY LEVEL

The new data centre had to be located near the other flagship data centre in Hasselt, Belgium, for reasons of low-latency interconnection. The establishment of this new facility results in phasing out two remaining data centres in Veenendaal (NL) and Leuven (BE) respectively.

As Cegeka put high requirements on the security level of its hybrid cloud proposition, the company chose to deploy an advanced biometric fingerprint solution for the locking systems of Minkels Varicon racks. Engineers from ICTroom and Minkels sat together on-site to provide an integrated design for a total security solution. This team of engineers managed to adapt it to the central card access control system and data centre management system, the BMS.

ENERGY EFFICIENCY

To provide ultimate flexibility in standardised data centre design, ICTroom implemented its scalable IMD platform with a modular 750kW power capacity and initial room for 160 racks. While Cegeka is able to start with a capacity of 200 kW, the platform provides a pay-as-you- grow solution with the ability to flexibly adopt new technologies on the go. The modularity of Minkels’ Next Generation Cold Corridor adds to the enormous flexibility of the overall solution.

The low PUE figure is being established through the use of indirect adiabatic cooling and energy efficient components for power supply. “The end result is a state-of-the-art and very energy efficient solution,” adds Mr. Claes. “Although the greater part of energy savings come from the cooling system, the airtightness of Minkels Cold Corridors and high air permeability of their racks significantly add to the energy efficiency of the cooling system in place.”

The data centre in Geleen is provided As-a-service by ICTroom, with an ICTroom employee on-site and remote monitoring from ICTroom’s NOC in Schiphol Airport Business Park in Lijnden, The Netherlands. This way, Cegeka is able to lower its CAPEX investments.