Redland City Council in Queensland will reduce the risk of weather-related outages, increase energy efficiency, free up office space and gain higher performance across its IT environment through a new modular data centre from Vertiv, formerly Emerson Network Power.
The solution will be implemented in a purpose-built facility elevated to put it out of harm’s way from weather events, which typically cause IT outages once or twice per year in the region.
If the Council is affected, these outages can leave Redland’s 150,000 citizens unable to access services such as utilities, animal management and libraries.
By moving to the Vertiv containerised modular data centre it will free up between 150-200sqm of space within the council previously taken up by its legacy data centres, allowing it to create more open work spaces and bring teams within thecCouncil closer together.
The new data centre will save up to 40 per cent in electricity costs, bolstered further by solar panels that will be fitted to the facility housing the data centre.
As well as increased security and resiliency, the new data centre will condense the Council’s IT infrastructure into a 10-rack unit that will help meet increasing demand for secure, powerful facilities to host critical IT infrastructure supporting a range of applications.
Redland City Council CIO, Glynn Henderson said the municipality is trying to capitalise on the the move as much as possible.
“Outsourcing the management of our data centre will enable our team to start focusing on smart city initiatives, which is something we’re building towards," Henderson said.
“We haven’t defined what that’s going to mean exactly yet, but we’re looking at IoT, how we can make our utilities management systems smart and innovation hubs to support entrepreneurs and small businesses in the community."
This design, which includes a partitioned wall between the modular data centre and additional space in the facility, can easily be taken down or adjusted as the council needs to scale up its infrastructure as it rolls out smart city initiatives.
Vertiv A/NZ managing director, Robert Linsdell, said the solution is scalable, secure and robust with little risk of an outage.
“There’s plenty of hype about smart cities and IoT but it’s important to consider what infrastructure you need to pull that off,” he said.
"Redland City understands this, and they’re taking the steps now to make sure they can do the exciting part in the right way later.”