IT Power unveils NZ-made portable data centre

IT POWER UNVEILS NZ-MADE PORTABLE DATA CENTRE

AUCKLAND, New Zealand – IT Power today unveiled a more flexible and affordable answer to New Zealand organisations’ ICT infrastructure needs: the datablok, a fully portable data centre housed within the world’s most broadly adopted industry standard: the ISO shipping container.

“We’ve been thinking about data centres in a whole new way,” says IT Power Director Jason Lewis. “What we’ve created is a solution that offers responsiveness, high availability and efficiency, all at an affordable cost. You move, and your ICT infrastructure moves with you.”

IT Power custom manufactures each datablok to suit the client’s needs, starting with a 10, 20, 40 or 45 foot ISO shipping container and installing access, insulation, power, cooling, security and remote management/monitoring as required by the client. Fault tolerance, rack power density, internal configuration and other specific client needs are all incorporated in the final design.

The result is a data centre that can be transported anytime, anywhere in the world and stored in any environment: hot, cold, wet or dry. The datablok is weather-proof, shock-proof, seismically-restrained, fire resistant and climate-controlled.

Far cheaper and faster to build than a traditional 'bricks and mortar' data centre and more secure than outsourcing to 'the cloud', the datablok offers organisations a new level of flexibility and costs a fraction of similar solutions from multi-national vendors.

“Pricing from multi-national vendors typically starts at around NZD1 million, whereas we produce a datablok from NZD100,000 including an integrated standby generator, all dependent on the client’s specifications,” says Lewis.

“The other advantage is that unlike many multi-national vendors, when it comes to the components used to build your datablok, we’re vendor agnostic. When you choose a datablok, you get best-of-breed and fit-for-purpose hardware, locally supported and in whatever layout you wish.”

New Zealand and Asia-Pacific organisations are already expressing an interest in the datablok from a risk management perspective. The unit can be raised and placed on seismic restraint pads to protect core services from seismic events, liquefaction and flooding.

Hawkes Bay communications provider Unison will soon become the first New Zealand company to begin using one.

“The prime reason for choosing datablok was that it was more cost effective than moving the datacentre within our current building, and gave additional benefits of being external to the main site,” says Unison Chief Information Officer Mike McGarvey.

Although the datablok’s portability wasn’t a prime consideration for Unison, McGarvey believes this would offer benefits in the event that something went wrong at their principal site, “as we would be able to move the container, without having to rebuild a server room.”

“We are looking forward to experiencing the product once commissioning has been completed,” he says.

A datablok can also be deployed by air, road or sea as a production facility, disaster/emergency response or to support government, NGO or defence operations. Other uses include oil and gas exploration, sports events or movie-making, where there is a need to move and operate critical ICT equipment between different locations.

A datablok typically takes only 8 to 12 weeks to construct. IT Power is available to meet with prospective clients to discuss how a datablok might enhance their organisation's responsiveness, risk management and profitability.

ENDS

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