Verne Global expands green datacentre footprint in Iceland

Verne Global, a wholesale supplier of datacentre space, plans to expand its facility in Keflavik, Iceland, with 500m² of UK-made modular datacentres to meet growing demand for storage.

The facility will not use water cooling or mechanical cooling equipment, such as compressors. Instead, it will use power from Iceland’s renewable energy sources and free air cooling technology to minimise carbon emissions.

The datacentre will be the world's first dual-sourced, 100% renewably powered datacentre, according to Verne Global, as it will use Iceland’s natural geothermal and hydroelectric power.

The datacentre, which will be assembled onsite at Verne’s 45-acre campus in Keflavik, will go live in the third quarter of 2013. Currently, the modular facility is being prefabricated and tested in Northern England at Colt Technologies’ facility.

“As cloud, mobile and big data applications drive organisations to look for cutting-edge solutions for their data storage needs, interest in our Icelandic facility continues to gain momentum, so we need to expand our current footprint,” said Jeff Monroe, CEO of Verne Global.

The company built its Icelandic datacentre facility in October 2011, but as more of its governments, private companies and public sector customers look for ways to minimise their power consumption and carbon footprint, the datacentre provider is expanding its facility further.

Verne is working with Colt for the datacentre expansion project, having selected Colt’s ftec (flexible technology) datacentre.

The ftec datacentre is built in a modular way, with steel frames, and uses standardised, right-sized technology components to reduce IT waste. The materials used in the datacentre facility can be recycled at the end of its life.

A modular datacentre is infrastructure in a container that can be shipped to anywhere in the world and set up anywhere that has an internet connection and cooling techniques.

For Verne Global’s campus, Colt customised the datacentre design to take advantage of Iceland’s climate, which enables free air cooling to be used 365 days a year, said Guy Ruddock, vice-president of design and delivery for Colt.

Colt built a tailor-made modular datacentre based on a combination of standardised architecture, proven modular components and options for dynamic scalability in terms of space, cooling and power requirements. “The result is a datacentre that matches or exceeds the durability and quality standards of a traditional build, but is ready for work in a fraction of the time,” he said.

“This, coupled with the 100% renewable, dual-sourced power supplying the datacentre hall, provides high efficiency and reliability,” added Ruddock.

As standard, the datacentre's power usage effectiveness (PUE) is 1.21, but the use of continuous outside air cooling will reduce it further.

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