Colocation

Interior Health selects Hut 8 as data centre partner

Hut 8 Mining has signed an agreement with Interior Health to support their operations by delivering safe, secure, and reliable colocation services from the company’s flagship Kelowna data centre through 2028. “We’ve been investing in our high-performance computing business, as well as in our customers, and are proud to expand our services further into the health sector,” says Josh Rayner, VP of High-Performance Computing at Hut 8. “We are honoured to have been chosen as Interior Health’s trusted high-performance computing infrastructure provider.” With five data centres located in British Columbia and Ontario, Hut 8 delivers colocation, public and private cloud, and manages services to government, private sector, and non-profit organisations across a variety of industries including finance, gaming, technology, AI, and more. “We look forward to partnering with Hut 8 as our new hosting facility and infrastructure provider,” says Mark Braidwood, Executive Director Technology at Interior Health. “In an increasingly interconnected world, businesses are demanding more reliable, secure, and scalable hosting options to ensure optimal performance and uninterrupted operations.”

The University of York moves data to Sweden to reach net zero

As part of its ambition to reach net zero, the University of York will place much of the university’s advanced calculations at EcoDataCenter in Falun, Sweden. Access to sustainable infrastructure for the most energy-consuming part of IT has been the determining factor. "Given the university’s strong commitment to net zero and the fact that our high-performance computing facility will be used for climate research, we were happy to find a partner with a clear focus on environmental sustainability and the capability and maturity to deliver," says Richard Fuller, Assistant Director at the University of York. The need for more data will increase by 300% over the next few years. AI and Machine Learning are part of the concept of High-Performance Computing and are by far the most energy-consuming data, and will constitute the majority of the data growth. A sustainable digital infrastructure that can handle the growing amount of data is vital for the green transition. When the university began looking at the next iteration of its High-Performance Computing facility, it realised that finding a colocation facility that could fulfil its requirements would be a great challenge. Turning to the Nordic countries, the university identified EcoDataCenter as a facility that meets both its needs and values. By placing the data in EcoDataCenter in Falun, the university is able to reduce carbon emissions from the data by about 98%, compared to handling the same data in the UK. Apart from EcoDataCenter in Sweden, being the place where the University of York is carrying out its calculations, the parties will also jointly work to raise knowledge about increased requirements for sustainability in the area of High-Performance Computing. Lack of knowledge about sustainable solutions, demands for innovation and speed often lead to sustainability being deprioritised. “Sustainable research IT is a key principle of the University of York. In addition to optimising the performance of both hardware and software, we need to look at the environmental impact of our work. We have to ask ourselves how we can contribute to positive change by making our supercomputing part of the ‘Green HPC’ movement,” says Dr Emma Barnes, Head of Research IT at the University of York. Due to the cool climate, the cost of green energy and the availability of labour, Sweden is an attractive country when it comes to data centre establishments. However, EcoDataCenter sees that many companies and organisations are turning to Sweden to learn more about the possibilities of sustainability from a broader perspective than just green energy. "When the University of York visited our facility in Falun to learn more about how we construct data centres and how we view the role of data centres in society and the circular economy, we found a common agenda in accelerating the green transition in digitalisation. The collaboration has already started, and we are seeing even more universities interested in what we can offer," says Dan Andersson, CEO at EcoDataCenter.

Global colocation provider, Telehouse International Corporation of Europe, has strengthened its operational and customer experience excellence with a restructuring of its operations department and five new appointments, including two new members to the board of directors.   Previously holding the Senior Director of Customer Experience position, Mark Pestridge has been promoted to the role of Executive Vice President and General Manager with the responsibility of informing and supporting the work of the board, including leading the organisation’s short and long term strategies and overseeing the operations of the business globally. With over 20 years’ experience in the data centre and service provider space, Mark has a solid history of developing strategic partnerships across the industry that achieve strong and consistent business performance. Joining Mark on the Board of Directors as Senior Vice President and Leader of Technical Services is Paul Lewis, former Senior Director of Technical Services, who led the Operational, Construction, and Design Departments at Telehouse. Paul also takes on responsibility for informing and supporting the work of the board, including the setting of the global vision and strategy, delivering of the agreed strategy, overseeing the company’s entire operations and optimising the organisation’s operational capabilities. The restructure of the Telehouse Europe operations department sees the creation of a new Data Centre Services Department, aimed at providing efficient and secure services to its customers. This department is managed by a newly appointed Data Centre Services Senior Director, Scott Longhurst. Scott joined Telehouse in February this year and has over 30 years’ experience in critical infrastructure management and engineering in the data centre and telecommunications industry. In his new role, Scott will ensure that the global colocation provider can continue to build a culture of continuous improvement that places customers at the heart of all its business operations and customer experience initiatives. Telehouse’s new Data Centre Services Department is comprised of three key focus areas, Data Centre Operations headed by newly appointed Alex Mason, and Security Services and Service Delivery headed by Rob Rennie and Simon Smith respectively. Alex, who joined Telehouse in April, focuses on the management and strategic vision of Telehouse’s mission critical facilities environments. He is also responsible for the day-to-day service management and maintenance of all infrastructure, including building and facilities management, on a 24/7 basis. Rob, who has been promoted to Security Services Director, oversees the management and strategic vision of Telehouse’s physical security including the security of the colocation provider’s assets and those of its customers. He is responsible for evaluating risks to Telehouse and its customers and ensuring that robust procedures are in place to mitigate these risks and for driving efficiencies and ongoing improvement of security systems and processes. As the newly promoted Service Delivery Director, Simon takes on the Service Desk responsibility, installation of all white space client solutions such as cage and rack builds, power connections, interconnection cabling, campus wide ducts and interconnection of the Data Centres. Takayo Takamuro, Managing Director & European Chief Executive of Telehouse Europe, commented, “We’re undergoing a transformation of Telehouse that will help us achieve greater operational and customer experience excellence. The new Data Centre Services Department will help us enhance our ability to respond to changing customer needs proactively and ensure ongoing enhancement of the customer journey through end-to-end services. As a global colocation provider known for its unrivalled connectivity, we continuously strive to drive our interconnection strategy forward and into new areas, with all the newly appointed senior members supporting the business to achieve this goal.”

i3 Solutions Group secures patents for greater data centre resiliency

i3 Solutions Group has been issued two patents by the USPTO (US Patent and Trademark Office) for its Adaptable Redundant Power (ARP) topology control solution for mission-critical electrical power systems. ARP is a hardware and software control system that overcomes the inflexibility of common data centre electrical designs, solving the service level agreement (SLA) disparity problem whereby power supply chain systems are fixed but IT load demands, and criticality are variable. At the same time, ARP addresses constraints associated with traditional static power topologies which can restrict access to available data centre power, often leaving costly stranded capacity unused and increasing end user costs. This is an acute challenge for the wholesale colocation industry, which does an admirable job securing and deploying grid power capacity, but is often unable to fully or optimally utilise it - causing energy waste and higher costs. Benefits of ARP Ed Ansett, Founder and Chairman of i3 Solutions Group, says, “Every business has low to high levels of application criticality and interdependency. Through developments such as Kubernetes, IT can be orchestrated to reflect this. However, when it comes to electricity, the power chain is fixed, wasteful and difficult to change. ARP is a way to flex the power SLA to match the IT workload SLA without the considerable expense of rewiring the entire topology design.” By enabling power service levels to be aligned with that of the IT load, ARP provides a range of benefits to both data centre operators and their IT customers. ARP enables applications and the hardware they sit on to be provisioned with varying levels of electrical power resilience. Today, it is obvious that not all IT workloads are equal - for example, a dev ops project for a marketing campaign versus live financial transactions workloads in retail or merchant bank, or a network rack compared with a super compute cluster. However, the way power is delivered using a fixed topology does not differentiate in terms of criticality, treating all workload destinations equally. ARP is different because it can automatically provide power resilience across the topology that is dynamically matched to the criticality of the IT load. ARP solves inherent redundant power challenges too Traditionally power chain designs for data centres are based on a chosen level of capacity, resilience and redundancy of N, N+1, N+2 and less commonly 2N, 2N+1 and 2(N+1). But once the topology is decided and deployed it is fixed. It is then expensive, time consuming and extremely difficult to change. ARP addresses this. ARP can also provide Inherent Redundant Power (IRP). Where some electrical designs leave ‘power pockets’ (assigned power that is unused) - IRP accesses previously trapped or stranded power and prevents it going to waste by utilising it to provide additional levels of redundancy. Power-as-a-Service offers from colocation data centres one step closer ARP offers colocation data centres the opportunity to create new business models based on their power infrastructure. One of the advantages, for example, is that ARP enables a staggered approach to infrastructure roll out which responds to end-user load and not design criteria. By treating power as a service right from the construction phase, ARP addresses many flexibility issues which have surfaced for modern data centre operators. While data centres will continue to be designed as physical buildings which are broken down into halls, ARP modules are flexible enough to provide power across multiple halls. ARP therefore enables developers to move away from traditional and capitally intense methods of infrastructure deployment - up-front design, source, pay for and roll-out the full site requirement for genset, switchgear, UPS, PDU and ancillary equipment, and then wait for the demand to arrive.

Green data centres for Thailand’s sustainable economic growth

Under the theme ‘Open. Connect. Balance’, Thailand recently hosted ASEAN leaders at the 2022 APEC Summit, and among many current unprecedented challenges discussed, helping the region regain its balance seemed to be a common thread, with the Bangkok Goals on Bio-Circular-Green (BCG) Economy set as one of the roadmaps. As one of the fastest growing regions in the world - and one of the most vulnerable to climate change - Southeast Asia is trying to strike a balance between performance and sustainability: prioritising recovery and growth, while keeping the eyes on a consistent sustainable development that will allow the country to thrive for many years to come. Digital transformation, integrated across all aspects of society, has already been identified as one of the key components to driving the country’s overall economic competitiveness, and many already understand that there is only one way to embrace Thailand 4.0 sustainably. Many industries are gradually ‘going green’, including green finance, green transportation powered by EVs and green hotel standards. Now comes the turn for one of the most valuable assets that this revolution will bring - data. Thailand is leading the way, not only by having the region’s most advanced data centre for colocation and cloud services, but also by having one that generates its own renewable energy. SUPERNAP (Thailand), a joint venture between leading Thai companies, is the only Tier IV colocation and cloud data centre in the country to have implemented a solar panel farm. This move contributes to the development of the green digital infrastructure of the region, while also supporting Thailand’s long term sustainable economic development. Every year, the volume and value of data generated and collected by organisations in Thailand grows exponentially, as many recognise its strategic value for business decisions. The more data collected and stored, the more knowledge, opportunities and competitive advantage businesses gain. More data, on the other hand, requires larger spaces and more energy to keep the ecosystem running, which, in most cases, comes from electricity from fossil fuels. If no action is taken, this could not only lead to a problematic increase of greenhouse gas emissions, but to dangerous price fluctuations, as there have been recent electricity price increases influenced by geopolitical challenges and increasing demand. Thai businesses are looking for secure, scalable, resilient, and now sustainable, data centres to fully realise the potential of data while reducing costs. “As a regional digital infrastructure leader, SUPERNAP (Thailand)’s transition to renewable energy was already an urgent priority, and we are now extremely proud to have reinforced our position as Thailand’s most sustainable commercial data centre. Powering operations by solar panel farm will not only help us reduce carbon footprint on behalf of our colocation and cloud clients but will also minimise the impact of energy price fluctuations. While we are not immune to rising electricity costs, solar green energy from the solar panel farm is significantly cheaper than retail rates, which will allow us keep prices as low as possible, an ultimately enable customer's success stories with highly secure, scalable, resilient and now sustainable digital IT infrastructure,” shares Yap Jin Yi, CEO of SUPERNAP (Thailand). SUPERNAP (Thailand) has partnered with WHA Utilities and Power to build its solar panel farm, recognising WHA’s leadership in maximising innovation and technology to create long term sustainable value in the country. Thailand’s economy will leverage emerging digital technologies to solve the most pressing problems and drive growth, whether in finance, retail, healthcare, manufacturing or tourism. Data-driven technology has the potential to shape the future in new and unimaginable ways, but first, businesses and individuals must ensure that there is a future to look forward to. Embracing sustainability is a pressing matter, and change must begin immediately.

Colt drives forward cloud colocation for capital markets

Colt Technology Services has announced the successful completion of a pioneering cloud colocation Proof of Concept (PoC), which demonstrates the viability of hosting and distributing multicast data in the cloud for global capital market customers. The testing represents a step towards greater services and automation for real-time raw data and trading applications, bringing capital market customers closer to leveraging the full benefits of the cloudification of market data. In the PoC, Colt worked with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to build virtual distribution Points of Presence (PoPs) in the AWS Cloud. This allows customers to lift and shift applications onto the cloud without the need for any physical infrastructure. This means services can be deployed rapidly, reducing service delivery SLAs from the usual weeks or months of traditional physical colocation in the exchange, to just days. Arthur Rank, Global Director, Capital Market Solutions for Colt, says: “Capital market customers across the globe have increasingly been looking to the cloud to drive their digital transformations, but until now they have been limited by the inability of cloud service providers to facilitate multicast. The success of this PoC presents a huge opportunity for capital markets to move as many workloads into the cloud as possible and truly leverage the flexibility, agility and speed of the cloud. “Colt has long been the leading connectivity provider for global capital markets and this ground-breaking PoC demonstrates our commitment to providing innovative, market-leading services to the global market,” he adds.

Flexibility key to addressing rising colocation energy costs

Deteriorating bottom line costs for colocation data centres, caused by market uncertainty, has further underlined the need for facility stakeholders to consider flexible energy models in the future, according to Aggreko. It follows a new report from FTI Consulting showing energy prices in UK data centres rising by over 600% since January 2021. With this figure tracking markedly higher than Germany (270%), France (400%) and the Netherlands (360%), the impact on data centre providers using all-in customer models could be sharp and wide-ranging. Taking this market turbulence into account, Aggreko is encouraging retail colocation providers to put steps in place to address what could become a pressing crisis as fixed-price energy contracts expire. Billy Durie, Global Sector Head for Data Centres at Aggreko, explains: “Though the UK data centre market has previously been able to use these previously-agreed terms to largely guard against rising energy costs, this state of affairs cannot continue forever. “Providers in the colocation market working under all-in pricing agreements are especially vulnerable to this encroaching problem, so energy professionals in the sector must ask themselves - how can we guard against this cost? Faced with this question, we anticipate moves toward decentralised energy models to mitigate against the fragility of the national grid, especially as current price hikes are not showing signs of easing.” Energy-related market turbulence identified in FTI Consulting’s report could further supercharge an already-competitive colocation marketplace, driven by exponential demand for data centre services. According to Aggreko, current volatility cannot be translated into a race-to-the-bottom cost mentality, and the deprioritisation of environmental goals that may ensue. “It cannot be denied that the data centre market is currently in a delicate position, but these pressing concerns should not be met at the cost of long-term sustainability strategies,” Billy concludes. “Instead, stakeholders must look for packages and services that can bridge the energy gap while lowering emissions. Green technologies such as Stage V generators and hybrid battery systems, provided through innovative hire strategies, offer an effective way of achieving both objectives.” www.aggreko.com

Is Amsterdam’s server sleep state legislation the way forward?

What implications do Amsterdam's sleep state regulations have for global data centres? Can the sector self-regulate, or will it require legislation to harness the power reduction benefits of putting unused IT into a sleep state? Ed Ansett, Founder and Chairman of i3 Solutions Group and Damien Wells, Managing Director of Spa Communications, discuss sleep state technology, how it could help sector sustainability and the challenges surrounding its implementation, especially for colocation companies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E_jK0mWLD8 www.i3.solutions www.spacomms.com

ESR announces over $1bn first close of inaugural Data Centre Fund

ESR has announced the first close of over $1 billion in equity commitments for its inaugural vehicle, Data Centre Fund 1, dedicated to the development of its growing data centre business. ESR DC Fund 1 brings together some of the world’s largest institutional investors, including sovereign wealth and pension funds. ESR will raise a separate discretionary capital sleeve to co-invest into the fund which will likely close the balance of the fund at the hard cap of $1.5 billion. Additionally, the partners have an upsize option of an additional equity commitment of $1.5 billion, that would bring the total investment capacity to as much as $7.5 billion over time. ESR’s current data centre development portfolio comprises data centre projects primely located in major data centre clusters across Asia, including Hong Kong, Osaka, Tokyo, Seoul, Sydney, Mumbai and Singapore, delivering 300MW IT load. Amongst these projects is a key asset the group acquired in Osaka that will be developed into a multi-phase data centre campus with a development potential of up to 95MW IT load to serve both hyperscalers and colocation operators in the rapidly growing Osaka market. Jeffrey Shen and Stuart Gibson, Co-Founders and Co-CEOs of ESR, says: “APAC is the prime market for data centre development and investment in the new era of digitalisation. The substantial first close of our inaugural data centre fund marks a significant milestone for ESR as we continue to grow and scale our digital infrastructure business. We thank our capital partners for their strong support to this exciting effort. “As the largest new economy real estate platform in APAC, we are looking to play into the critical need for digital infrastructure in a big way going forward by leveraging our core competitive advantages with a singular focus to support our capital partners and customers to thrive and capitalise on the continued rise of the new economy and digital transformation in APAC.” Diarmid Massey, ESR Data Centres CEO, highlights: “With nearly $60 billion of New Economy AUM, digital infrastructure is a key strategic focus for ESR Group. Naturally, our ambition is to offset high energy consumption by aligning with our ESG strategy to refurbish, re-develop, convert some of our existing 39.8 million sqm GFA of assets into large and edge data centres, and to explore sustainable options through actual renewable energy generation from the rooftops.” Devashish Gupta, ESR Data Centres CIO, elaborates: “The APAC Data Centre fund is uniquely placed to take advantage of ESR Group’s adjacencies in land, power, fibre origination, strong pipeline of recently acquired data centre specific sites, a dedicated team of experienced data centre professionals, and partnerships with best-in-class data centre operators for co-location assets. Our ability to offer powered shells, fully fitted, and colocation assets to serve hyperscalers, enterprises as well as operators, provides a scalable solution with shorter ready-for-service timelines to our customers; and risk-adjusted strategies to our capital partners.”

Flexibility key to addressing rising colo energy costs

Deteriorating bottom line costs for colocation data centres (colos) caused by market uncertainty has further underlined the need for facility stakeholders to consider flexible energy models in the future, according to Aggreko. It follows a new report from FTI Consulting showing energy prices in UK data centres rising by over 600% since January 2021. With this figure tracking markedly higher than Germany (270%), France (400%) and the Netherlands (360%), the impact on data centre providers using all-in customer models could be sharp and wide-ranging. Taking this market turbulence into account, Aggreko is encouraging retail colo providers to put steps in place to address what could become a pressing crisis as fixed-price energy contracts expire. Billy Durie, Global Sector Head for Data Centres at Aggreko, explains: “Though the UK data centre market has previously been able to use these previously-agreed terms to largely guard against rising energy costs, this state of affairs cannot continue forever. “Providers in the colo market working under all-in pricing agreements are especially vulnerable to this encroaching problem, so energy professionals in the sector must ask themselves – how can we guard against this cost? Faced with this question, we anticipate moves toward decentralised energy models to mitigate against the fragility of the national grid, especially as current price hikes are not showing signs of easing.” Energy-related market turbulence identified in FTI Consulting’s report could further supercharge an already-competitive colo marketplace, driven by exponential demand for data centre services. According to Aggreko, current volatility cannot be translated into a race-to-the-bottom cost mentality, and the deprioritisation of environmental goals that may ensue. “It cannot be denied that the data centre market is currently in a delicate position, but these pressing concerns should not be met at the cost of long-term sustainability strategies,” Billy concludes. “Instead, stakeholders must look for packages and services that can bridge the energy gap while lowering emissions. Green technologies such as Stage V generators and hybrid battery systems, provided through innovative hire strategies, offer an effective way of achieving both objectives.”