Local technology infrastructure company Telenetix Technology Solutions has created a modular data centre using a standard shipping container.
The company explains that the container forms the basis for design and construction.
Dean Hall, operations director at Telenetix, says portability and modularity are redefining the future of the global ICT industry, when it comes to making sustainable ICT infrastructure investments.
Africa first
“Telenetix's modular Technology Data Centre (the T-Cube Modulus), the first of its kind on the African continent, is a fully home-grown data centre solution, which is perfectly suited for deployment in the African environment and offers unrivalled flexibility, scalability, power efficiency and capacity at a fraction of the cost of its traditional brick and mortar predecessor,” says the company.
It adds that the first unit manufactured is already destined for export to Australia today, where it will be installed and used as a hosting facility for a local ISP.
Gartner previously said “a strategic technology is defined as one with the potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years”.
“Reshaping the data centre” is among the top 10 of these strategic technologies mentioned by the research company.
Green data
Telenetix says Google and Microsoft pioneered the concept of containerised data centre infrastructure in the US.
“The T-Cube Modulus offers enhanced performance, while ensuring power energy efficiency (PUE ratio of approximately 1.3) within its “green” data centre.
“This augurs well for both the environment and business, considering the use of recycled containers and reduction in electricity consumption normally associated with conventional, power-hungry data centres.”
The company adds that this data centre solution is capable of enabling several ICT requirements. Some of these include cloud computing and virtualisation, hosting, social computing and computer networking, business continuity, storage and security, and broadcasting and transmission.
Synapsis farm
The company first announced plans to build a data centre farm that will house container-based data centres in April.
The concept of a data centre in a container was made popular by international giants like Sun Microsystems and HP, which both have servers packed into shipping containers for portable data centres.
Telenetix has several versions of the container-based technologies and supplies to a range of customers, from the State IT Agency (SITA), to broadcasters, such as MultiChoice. The new farm will focus on pulling the modular data centre into clusters, with each module serving an individual customer.
Hall previously said the company hoped to have the data centre farm completed by October next year.
Each container, called Modulus, will be stacked into groups of 24, which the company calls a Nucleus. The entire farm will be called Synapsis.
The Modulus has essentially been built from recycled shipping containers and converted to include cable space, rack space, proper cooling and power. All the containers come with a mixed power solution, making use of both solar and generator power, depending on the needs of each customer.
While Telenetix hopes to get people to make use of the new farm, it is also selling the Modulus for companies' own use on premises. Each container, without actual servers in place, will cost the customer R600 000.
The company is working on boxed solutions for a telecoms provider to bring better cell coverage to rural areas, and is also talking to government to have more containers shipped for SITA's services in hard to reach places.
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SA to get modular data centre farm
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