Multichoice, the leading multichannel digital satellite television provider/operator across the African continent, has built a new 500sq meter Data Centre at their premises in Randburg.

Data Centre's are becoming stressed by increased capacity requirements and the higher density of IT equipment, consolidation and virtualization, Multichoice required a new Data Centre solution that could meet its growing IT requirements.

Robert Pretorius (Technical Manager) was provided with a brief to build a new 640kVA Data Centre enabling all the small server rooms on the Multichoice Campus to relocate and be consolidated in one Data Centre. He had to ensure the Data Centre uptime, reliability, availability, scalability while at the same time reducing the operational costs (very high cooling bills), report on efficiency and create a more carbon friendly footprint of the new Data Centre.

Customers request: “I required a minimum Tier 4 type solution with all my services having redundancy”.

Currently installed: A stream supply is fed from a 1MVA transformer, 1 x 1.25MVA diesel generator with 12 hours run time diesel fuel supply feeding an emergency panel and UPS panel. The emergency panel will feed the chiller plants on the roof, lighting and cooling units in the Data Centre. UPS panel has 4 x 200kVA UPS's connected in parallel N+1 configuration which will supply all the IT equipment in the Data Centre, this whole infrastructure is then duplicated on the B stream supply .

Inside the Data Centre the main Power Distribution Units that powers the racks have the latest software technology that can manage the power to the IT cabinet. Alarms and early warnings can be sent to the Data Centre operator therefore managing his data centre with no downtime.

“Effectively cooling the Data Centre was going to be a challenging issue with today's high-powered server, storage and networking equipment driving up power densities in server rooms that cannot be handled by standard building comfort cooling; this was achieved by using the latest technology in predictable cooling using In Row Cooling with Free Cooling Chiller plants. The scalable and modular architecture allowed for the high density areas of the Data Centre to be in a hot isle containment solution. Sealing the hot isle off from the rest of the room ensured that the hot air would not mix with the supply air. Now the cluster of high density racks can be environmentally controlled separately decreasing the amount of energy the system uses”

Presently the Data Centre consists of 50 racks rated at a total load of 330kW, majority of the racks load at 7.2kWatts and with a Very High Density POD where the racks are rated at 11kWatts.