Switch Datacenters has announced a significant energy efficiency upgrade to its data centers located in the Amsterdam area. Switch Datacenters implemented Air@Work’s indirect adiabatic cooling technology, yielding improved energy, water and maintenance savings. This now results in a calculated, ultra-low Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 1.07.
With two large Tier3+ colocation data centers located in the Amsterdam region, Switch Datacenters saw the need for a significant infrastructural upgrade to its Switch AMS1 and Switch WRD1 facilities — from Tier 3+ to an ultimate Tier 4 data center standard meeting full Uptime Institute specifications. As part of this efficiency-upgrade and Tier 4 upgrade, the indirect adiabatic cooling units from data center cooling infrastructure manufacturer Air@Work were key to achieving this level of reliability and ultra-low thus highly energy efficient PUE figure.
Global Cloud Providers
“Stricter infrastructural requirements from especially some global cloud service providers present in our Amsterdam data centers have led us to make new investments in innovative technologies,” said Gregor Snip, CEO and founder of Switch Datacenters. “Recently we added 20 new cloud providers to our customer portfolio, predominantly ISPs planning to deploy a European hub based out of Amsterdam. These companies need to give their customers a truly 100% uptime guarantee.”
“Although our Tier3+ data center operations were already meeting enterprise-grade standards, these Tier 4 specifications are now taking our data center infrastructure to the next level,” added Snip. “In fact, our data centers are the first and only in the Amsterdam region that are Tier 4 classified according to Uptime Institute specifications.”
“As energy-efficiency greatly improves the reliability and robustness of a data center, Air@Work’s indirect adiabatic cooling technology significantly adds to accomplishing this Tier 4 status,” added Snip. “Our cooling segment became 80% more energy efficient while the easy to maintain cooling units result in low maintenance costs; now maintenance can be done by our own crew. The calculated PUE of 1.07 currently makes us one of the greenest and probably also one of the most cost-effective data center service providers on the European market.”
Air@Work, StatiqCooling
Air@Work’s indirect adiabatic cooling solution utilizes ‘StatiqCooling’ — a synthetic heat exchanger for indirect adiabatic cooling. The heat exchanger is a patented technology developed by Air@Work which operates with extremely low water consumption. These systems are small in size and come with modular thus highly scalable characteristics. Its power capacity modularly varies from 20kW up to 200kW.
All adiabatic cooling components are designed for N+1 which makes it a highly redundant solution – the cooling does not depend on a single cold water circuit. On top of that, a smart operating system ensures elimination of all single points of failure while providing a sharp reduction in complexity. The modularity of Air@Work’s cooling system also allows for accurate measurements and precise control of utilization, consumption and varying cooling models specific to multi-tenancy requirements within data center environments.
Next to the Air@Work indirect adiabatic cooling, Switch Datacenters implemented a variety of other major upgrades to its Switch AMS1 and Switch WRD1 facilities - to ensure meeting Uptime Institute’s Tier 4 specifications. All systems (except the racks) were being upgraded in close design partnership with Schneider Electric - from transformers to the electrical board and UPSs, and from busbar systems to the PDUs.
