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!