“We saw an opportunity to get involved in the landscape and provide customers with more choice,” said Todd Coleman, founder, president, and CEO of eStruxture. “By establishing facilities on both coasts, and in both downtown and suburban locations, we knew we would be uniquely positioned to support customers’ shifting workloads and their moves into new markets.”The North American data center space is heavily influenced by the accelerated growth of edge and cloud computing, as well as data-intensive workloads from companies leveraging AI, machine learning (ML), and IoT functionality. These trends lead to increased demand for the build out of new data centers and ultra-high-density deployments.

Specifically, the eStruxture team sought a partner to help build out its MTL-2 colocation facility with highly resilient electrical and mechanical infrastructure in a phased, modular approach. This and subsequent builds enable eStruxture to provide its customers with more locations, connections, and capacity.

Solution

eStruxture sees the future of its industry being largely focused on establishing more data center locations. Its customers are building hybrid environments that mix colocation, managed services, and public cloud architectures. To support these options and give customers choice in designing the infrastructure they need, eStruxture focused on modularity, allowing the company to evolve alongside its customers.

One of the biggest challenges the company faced was dealing with the enormity of design options influenced by differing customer requirements. Knowing that a one-size-meets-all approach was not what they wanted to offer, they engaged Vertiv to design and build its 187,000-square-foot MTL-2 facility. And while the planned capacity is 30 MW in support of high-density power needs, the eStruxture team wanted to ensure operations were as sustainable as possible.

Choosing equipment that would increase efficiency and minimize environmental impact was a key consideration throughout the design, deployment, and integration processes. The MTL-2 facility utilizes the Liebert EXL S1 uninterruptible power supply (UPS), which is designed for maximum efficiency and power density, and combines it with the Liebert PPC power conditioning and distribution cabinet. The UPS offers electrical protection and intelligent paralleling that optimizes performance at partial loads.

eStruxture’s pursuit of optimal sustainability is also supported by its use of the Liebert DSE thermal management system.

This pumped refrigerant economization system with a fail-safe direct expansion backup allows the company to utilize free cooling for much of the year.

The Liebert DSE features advanced controls with multiunit team modes that eliminate the inefficiencies of unit fighting. These Liebert iCOM controls also have an optimization feature that ensures automatic and smooth transition to economization for even greater gains in efficiency.

“As a water-free solution, the Liebert DSE perfectly aligned with our goals,” Coleman said. “It helps us keep our commitment to operate as sustainably as possible. Plus, the modular, scalable design allows us to add capacity without the need for additional chillers, cooling towers, or ductwork. Ultimately, the Liebert DSE system allows us to keep costs competitive.”

Controlling colocation costs also means making the most of available space and enabling intelligent power management, which eStruxture accomplished with the Liebert RX distribution cabinet and Vertiv Geist rack power distribution units (rPDUs) within Vertiv VR racks. With space always at a premium, the Liebert RX supplies packaged power distribution in a small footprint and offers the flexibility needed by eStruxture to add additional circuits when meeting changing room demands. The LCD provides easy access to true root mean square (RMS) measurements and battery-backed memory.

When added to the monitoring capabilities of its various rPDUs, eStruxture can easily analyze power usage data and adjust operations to meet customers’ service level agreements. Using only Vertiv solutions has allowed eStruxture to standardize their deployments and bring equipment online faster.

“When it came to choosing specific Vertiv technologies, we assessed their reliability, energy efficiency, and time to deploy,” Coleman said. “As a data center provider with a reputation for providing a la carte solutions, it was absolutely critical that we could produce customer resources when they needed them.”