Spring 2012 Update

We have progressed further with our investigation into the feasibility of providing a high power, high capacity data centre facility for HEAnet and our clients.

Having completed the feasibility study with Fahy Fitzpatrick, we wanted to assess what the commercial data centre market could offer in terms of >10kW per cabinet power requirements and to compare the costs of such space and power.

In September 2011 we engaged Paul Nolan, an Electrical engineer with almost 20 years experience of designing and project managing commercial data centres. We published a Procurement Information Notice (PIN) on eTenders inviting interested parties to participate in Technical Dialogue with HEAnet on providing high power dense data centre space in early October 2011.

We received responses from six organisations in total and conducted technical dialogue meetings with each to assess their commercial offerings and to outline HEAnet and the Education and Research community’s requirements for dense high power data centre space.

In conclusion, the Technical Dialogue process showed that the market is capable of providing for HEAnet’s high power demands for data centre hosting, but the need to customise the space for HEAnet and the need to maintain the ability to meet other customers’ high availability demands adversely affect the price of such services.

We have also progressed with our interim “Track 2” offering, and are working with WIT to offer cabinets with 6-30 kW power per cab to HEAnet clients.

Please contact noc@heanet.ie  if you’re interested in taking space in HEAnet’s Waterford PoP.