North India gets its first Green Datacenter

And
there are few potions that contain
both these elements in optimum quantities. However, datacenter
experts Sachin Gupta, Jay kalra and Amol Awasthi- people with
enormous experience in the US- made this very mix possible for
Catalyst's new datacener.

We
are calling the href="http://dqindia.ciol.com/content/cio_handbook2008/2008/108022001.asp">datacenter
green.
What are the parameters that make any datacenter href="http://dqindia.ciol.com/content/GreenIT/2009/109120905.asp">green?
Most
experts would agree that it is energy efficiency. However, people at
Catalyst would say that it is the coming together of various
elements- be it power savings, higher rack density, lowest possible
emissions or the walls of the datacenter. In fact, when it was on paper
and under
discussions, most of the vendors and analysts found it so ambitious
that they unanimously voiced their opinion- that making such a thing
is simply not possible. Today, Anupam Awasthi, CEO of Catalyst
proudly says that most of his vendors are bringing their clients to
his datacenter for visits.

The
prime USP of the datacenter is that
it uses absolutely no energy related cooling. What they use instead
is the indoor cooling technology that uses href="http://dqindia.ciol.com/content/dqtop20_09/IndustryAnalyses/2009/109081322.asp">chilled
water to keep the
datacenter cool. As they put it- they are using no gas for
refrigeration purposes. Even their fire fighting systems are
non-toxic in nature. However, given the price points at which they
have been acquired, Awasthi hopes that he doesn't have to use them
ever!

For
any efficient Datacenter the href="http://dqindia.ciol.com/content/GreenIT/2009/109010802.asp">Power
Usage Effectiveness (PUE)
should be below 1.6. Catalyst
predicts that theirs will be much lesser once the 40% rack space is
consumed. To further save energy, the datacenter has been made
literally like a sealed box. Its coated with epoxy paint that
prevents any moisture or water from seeping in, then there are
nitrate sheets for isolation, glass wool for temperature. And all
this on 9 inch think walls.

The
datacenter also has a tier 3++
certification- that basically means that there is no single point of
failure in the architecture. Be it system, connectivity, power or
cooling, everything has to have atleast two inlets. The other
technology that has been
leveraged big time is virtualization. And though there is a lot of
expertise and innovation that has gone into this datacenter, the
complex structure has everything to make life of the users simpler.

And
yes, it is aimed mostly at
Catalyst's SME clients, who will not only get the benefit of lower
OPEX but also the green tag!