NORWEGIAN DATA CENTRE COMBINES FLEXIBILITY AND RELIABILITY WITH DEIF

A plug and play approach to whitespace

As data storage, analytics, and processing becomes increasingly cloud-based, the demand for data centre capacity continues to grow, and flexibility is an important parameter: The ability to scale up or down as needed, or move and reconfigure server racks, is important to many customers. Demand changes, situations change, and data centres must be able to change accordingly.

Lefdal Mine Datacenter offers high flexibility through a modular, plug and play approach to data centre whitespace: Customers can order a shipping container from Lefdal Mine Datacenter’s partner Rittal. The container comes fully prepared for power, cooling, and communications, and the customer can fit the required server racks in it. The container is then shipped to Lefdal, driven down the mine on a truck, and lifted into place on a sturdy steel shelf. Connecting the container to power, cooling, and fibre cables is quick and easy, and the solution is up and running in a fraction of the time it would take to build a traditional data centre whitespace.

“The main advantage is that we get ready-made containers that can be installed quickly. We can typically install a container in eight hours or so from their arrival at Lefdal”, explains Kristian Todal. “The same thing applies to replacing containers: You can quickly take out a customer container and install a new one.”

Major international customers

Until 2008, the mine produced olivine, a mineral used in metalworking. When production ceased, the former foreman and his son hit upon the idea of using the site as a data centre, and the Lefdal Mine Datacenter opened in 2015. It offers 120,000 square metres of floor space distributed across 6 levels and a total of 75 chambers ready for data centre whitespace. The temperature in the mine is 9 degrees Celsius all year. The Tier III compliant centre design and the competitive prices (due to the low cost of power and cooling) has attracted several international customers from many different businesses and countries.

“Big international clients make up the major part of our customer portfolio”, says Kristian Todal. “They come from various businesses; many come from the so-called HPC (high performance computing) segment – for example AI (artificial intelligence) and research environments. They generally need a lot of power and high density, and it’s a segment with clients that require redundancy”.

Compliant with Tier III requirements

The controllers continuously exchange status and availability information, instantly and automatically switching from mains to UPS and genset power and prioritising consumers if needed. This gives the centre the reliable power it requires, and Paul Grytting is very satisfied with the performance of the PMS.

“I think the DEIF system is simple to configure”, he says. “I like the fact that the controllers are ready-made and set up with preconfigured parameters so we only need to change the things that are necessary for our site and plant. An example could be the time before closing and opening breakers, setting priorities – that kind of thing”.

Sivert Barmen Solvåg is happy with the product and application support provided by DEIF when needed: “There will always be questions along the way”, he says. “It was great to have DEIF support to rely on. They’ve always been very helpful – on this project and on other projects where we’ve used DEIF systems.”