The Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust has upgraded its data centre cooling to reduce technology costs.
The NHS trust provides healthcare across the north, east and mid-Devon and employs 15,000 staff, making it Devon’s largest employer. Acute, outpatient and remote care services are delivered by the trust.
It has worked with Secure I.T. Environments to upgrade the cooling of its data centre, with the project including the replacement of legacy cooling infrastructure with a free cooling system that will allow the data centre to operate in a higher temperature configuration over the course of the year and use ambient temperatures. This is expected to lower running costs.
Secure I.T. Environments said in a statement: “Each unit combines direct expansion air cooling and an energy efficient FreeCool circuit, as well as including built-in compressors for the direct expansion circuit. External hybrid heat rejection (HHR) units were also fitted on site.”
The project is scheduled to deliver a return on investment in less than three years as the data centre archives a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 1.14 and a cooling PUE of 1.10, the technology provider claimed.
Chris Wellfair, projects director at Secure I.T. Environments said: “The primary source of operating expenditure (OPEX) for data centres is electricity. Whilst maintaining the climate conditions within a data centre is critical, the ASHRAE TC9.9 2016 thermal guidelines now give confidence to operators that they can control the indoor temperature at higher levels. This, combined with the efficiencies gained with new equipment, will dramatically lower energy costs.”
