Cutting the ribbon to officially open the facility.
Data centre services provider Equinix today launched phase two of its SY3 data centre rollout in Sydney. Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy, officially opened the new data centre with Equinix’s managing director, Tony Simonsen.
The roll out of phase two cost US$39.4 million in total, with the first phase costing $US65 million.
The 22,927 square feet facility, which holds about 1000 cabinets, opened six months ahead of schedule due to an increase in cloud adoption and data usage among companies.
“Here in the Asia-Pacific, cloud traffic growth is forecast to rise by 48 per cent, [1.5 zettabytes] annually, by 2016 and this will be…the most traffic generated by any region in the world,” Conroy said, citing Cisco’s global cloud index forecast.
“While the government can take a leadership role, it is business and industry and investments like this that will determined whether the cloud potential is realised.”
In an effort to be more energy efficient, Equinix is using cold aisle containment for cooling. It prevents the flow of cold and hot air from mixing within the server room, making the cooling process more energy efficient.
A chilled water plant that recycles water is also being used for cooling. This includes a system that can measure temperature at several points around the data centre so that air flows can be adjusted and cool air can be effectively distributed, avoiding over-cooling.
Simonsen said the energy efficiency initiatives could help save the company about $50,000 a year in costs.
Simonsen would not say what the data centre’s power usage effectiveness (PUE) is but said it is “well below two”.
With Amazon Web Services recently opening up in Australia, Equinix also announced it is offering AWS Direct Connect services to customers.
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