Latitude unveils energy efficient concept data centre

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A new data centre showcasing the latest in energy efficient IT infrastructure equipment and design has been unveiled today.

Latitude UK, a data centre designer and integrator has opened its fully functional, energy efficient data centre showroom at its offices in Swindon to raise awareness of 'greener' IT infrastructure components available in the market today.

Eddie Partridge, Latitude business development director told IT PRO the new centre demonstrates what's possible using existing technology and what best-practice models are available for cutting energy consumption.

"We moved into a new building and wanted to build a new data centre that would keep energy costs under control, minimise floor space and cool the whole thing as efficiently as possible," he said. "It was also important to show we could practice what we preach in terms of using best-of-breed, energy efficient components."

Latitude applied the same methodology to scoping and building the new data centre as it would do with a client engagement, first looking to understand its requirements now and into the future, then looking at the limitations in terms of space and cost.

"It's important to apply economies of scale to controlling power consumption with the equipment you choose in a way that allows the organisation to grow from capacity, scalability and availability points of view," Partridge said.

The working model employs virtual tape library systems from Sepaton; eco-friendly hot-swappable power and cooling hardware architecture from APC; EqualLogic's iSCSI storage area network (SAN) system for backup, replication and virtualisation; and server virtualisation products from VMWare.

Partridge said virtualisation "allows for economies of scale by keeping down the number of servers we use and therefore the amount of power they consume". He added that the model offered benefits of creating 'pay-as-you-grow,' modular networked system that is cost effective and can also reduce energy consumption.

Other features include remote access, which reduces the need for travel, thus reducing potential carbon emissions and allows administrators to monitor for environmental threats such as temperature, humidity and leaks as well as intrusion detection.

And as a commitment to offsetting carbon emissions, Latitude is partnering with the government-approved offsetting provider Equiclimate, which Partridge said is an option that "should become part and parcel of data centre best practice moving forward".

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