New facility custom-designed with strong eco-credentials to help meet growing demand for managed cloud services in UK, Europe and Asia Pacific
Rackspace, the #1 managed cloud company, along with data centre 
and colocation provider Digital Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE: DLR) has today unveiled its new UK data centre. Based in Crawley, West Sussex, the 130,000 square foot data centre will help to meet the growing demand for managed cloud services in the UK and Europe. The facility has been designed with the specific needs of Rackspace customers in mind, encompassing top speeds, availability and energy efficiency.
Delivering outstanding Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 1.15[1] compared to the average data centre today rating of 1.7[2], and with a design BREEAM assessment certification of ‘Excellent’, it is one of the UK’s greenest data centres. The new operation is the first data centre in the UK to make use of innovative ‘indirect outside air’ cooling technology on this scale, without mechanical cooling, which means the overhead energy required to operate the data centre has been cut by almost 80 per cent[3]. The use of these cutting-edge technologies in the facility is testament to both Digital Realty’s and Rackspace’s full support of the latest ASHRAE guidelines[4], which demonstrates an ability to follow stringent energy and sustainability targets while ensuring high levels of server performance.
The Crawley data centre was designed to maximise compatibility to and compliance with Open Compute Project standards. By using Open Compute Project designs, Rackspace has been able to realise outstanding scalability and energy efficiency opportunities in the hardware it deploys. The data centre delivers less weight, less waste and less wattage than traditional server designs.
Mark Roenigk, COO, Rackspace, commented: “This data centre is the epitome of intelligent 21st century infrastructure engineering. It is intricately designed to provide a powerful engine to beat at the very heart of business operations. Highly accessible data that is securely stored and intelligently managed is a mission critical requirement for our customers’ businesses. As firms now look to the cloud for competitive advantage, sites like our new facility are quietly powering our economy, as well as the huge growth in ecommerce, mobile payments, the burgeoning Internet of Things industry, and the need to capture real time data and analytics.
“This is our tenth global data centre now open to customers across the world and comes at a time when we are seeing more and more organisations preferring to keep their data closer to home. We are extremely proud to offer services for managing the clouds of dynamic business functions as they grow in the multi-device era. To have built a facility that is a starting point for boosting the adoption of more efficient technologies in the UK and Europe is a great reward in itself.”
“The new UK datacenter will not only meet companies’ growing appetite for managed cloud services in the home market, it will also address the needs of Asia-based companies expanding aggressively overseas and our global customers who require a data centre footprint in Europe, APAC and the USA”, adds Ajit Melarkode, managing director of APAC, Rackspace, “Our recent success with Mindtree, a global leader in technology services, is proof that putting your data and infrastructure closer to where users reside means they have the power to handle complex computations, the bandwidth to manage large volumes of data and the speed to satisfy the decision-making appetites of its global customer base. We foresee growing interest in these types of services from India based westbound companies.”
The new data centre, which is the size of two football fields and holds up to 50,000 physical servers, occupies a 15 acre site. The initial build was constructed in 15 months and took approximately 500,000 man hours. It provides 6MW capacity across two data suites, and will eventually comprise of four data suites with a total 12MW capacity. The site allows for further expansion up to 30MW, and a staggered build approach maximises year-on-year advances in technology and efficiency gains.
Physical security is provided at multiple layers starting with the physical perimeter fence through to personnel badge readers. There are also biometrics scanners that read the fingerprint of an individual before they are given access to sensitive areas.
A.William Stein, Digital Realty’s Chief Executive Officer, commented: “With the addition of the Crawley site, the Digital Realty – Rackspace collaboration, which began in 2011, has been extended to a third continent. We are delighted to see Rackspace establish its new managed cloud data centre with such outstanding eco-credentials; in addition, Rackspace’s recent expansion in Sydney is accessing clean energy through Digital Realty’s Clean StartSM program. With competition growing for facility services across the UK and Europe, we are pleased Rackspace choose Digital Realty as a provider to collaborate on this bespoke facility in Crawley.”
Customers around the world will have access to the Crawley data centre, although Rackspace anticipates that the majority of requests will come from customers in the UK and Europe.
