LEIGHTON Contractors subsidiary Metronode has released details of its new Perth data centre, which will be the fourth data centre to open in the city in the past year.
LEIGHTON Contractors subsidiary Metronode has released details of its new Perth data centre, which will be the fourth data centre to open in the city in the past year.
It follows the opening of data centres by global IT giant Fujitsu, listed IT services company ASG Group, and local start-up HPC Data Centres.
Metronode says the new facilty, due to open in Shenton Park in October, will set a new standard for energy efficiency.
General manager Malcolm Roe said the data centre would be the first in Australia to use a BladeRoom system.
The BladeRooms are fully engineered factory built and tested modules that are delivered to site fully fitted and ICT-ready
Support areas and plant rooms will also be built in-factory to allow site works to be completed in parallel with off-site construction.
Mr Roe said this would reduce construction times and was scalable, via modular expansion from 30 equipment racks to thousands of racks.
Another Leighton subsidiary, telecommunications company NextGen, will be the major user of the Metronode facility.
However, Mr Roe insisted Metronode was carrier neutral and vendor neutral.
As such, it would seek to compete with HPC, which is fully independent of all telco carriers and technology vendors.
Most other data centres are set up and run by IT services firms, to support their core business.
Mr Roe said the new centre would offer a power utilisation efficiency (PUE) of less than 1.2, compared to a normal data centre, which can run in excess of 2.2.
“This provides up to 90 per cent reduction in power required for facility cooling and allows us to pass through this significant cost saving to our tenants,” he said.
The Shenton Park centre is the first step in a national expansion by Metronode, with Melbourne next on the list.
“They will complement Metronode’s existing data centres in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, (East) Perth and Adelaide, which are now approaching 100 per cent utilisation with strong customer demand throughout the country,” Mr Roe said.
The purpose-built Perth data centre will cover about 7,000 metres of space.
The data centre will be the terminus of a new Perth-to-Singapore undersea cable being established by Leighton subsidiary Australia-Singapore Cable Ltd.
Leighton announced last month the signing of a key deal for its plan to build the 4,800-kilometre high-speed cable, which is due to be completed in 2013.
It has reached agreement with Alcatel-Lucent to provide the latest optic fibre equipment for the submarine link, which will provide the option for 100 gigabit per second transmission.
