The rise of AI data-crunching and the demand for powerful new hardware is followed by increased requirements, primarily for electricity used by servers and storage in a rack or cabinet. Consequently, the Data Center Building Expansion is designed to function as a colocation for Data Center. It comprises 2000m2 of white space, envisioned to support a total critical IT load of 5.62MW with an average rack density of 6.5 kW and two independent meet-me rooms.

With less than 2,500m2 of building footprint area, 0.57kW of IT load per square meter of the project built up area, the project’s highlight is the most efficient space planning. The design supports the targeted rack density while maintaining sufficient spaces for the maintainability and functionality of the existing building’s features.

The Facility and MEP systems shall be configured and certified as TIER-III from Uptime Institute.

A substantial amount of heat produced by the processes, together with the location of the expansion building, induced one of the key design challenges. The structure is placed directly opposite the existing building generators and DRUPS rooms exhaust air louvers. Such circumstances required extensive engineering studies and validation by CFD modeling in order to optimize and secure maximum functionality.

The project divides the white space into four identical IT Clusters. Each cluster comprises 500m2, sufficient to optimally support an IT load of 1.365 MW, and 210 IT racks with an average rack density of 6.5 kW.

Including IT/Server Clusters, all areas will be provided with redundancy systems in a manner that allows maintenance without interrupting ongoing operations. That will be achieved by stacking Chiller modules of IT/Server clusters on the first and the second floor, with thermal storage of min 7 mins (charged by the chiller plant). The optimal arrangement of diesel generators and DRUPS will ensure stable support for the event of power failure.

Two meet-me rooms allocated for the project are provided with fully electrical and cooling redundancy, which will house the telecom service provider’s equipment as well as the owner’s core IT equipment and main cross-connect.