HP Expands Data Centre Ambitions

HP continues to talk up its data centre credentials, with the announcement of a new way for for clients to cut their capital investment requirements for the design and build of data centres in half, while significantly decreasing their carbon footprint at the same time.

Dubbed HP Flexible Data Centre (or HP Flexible DC), the patent-pending process allows customers to build standardised facilities, but using a modular approach to the design and build process. This means that customers can expand their facility to suit their demand levels.

Butterfly Design

The HP Flexible DC design approach has been dubbed the “butterfly” design. It is based on four prefabricated quadrants, or modules, that stem off a central administrative section. “The offering uses industrial components to improve cost efficiencies as well as a streamlined building process with a variety of options for power and cooling distribution,” said HP.

Customers will use a HP Critical Facilities Services team for consulting, design engineering and architecture services, to develop a facility best suited to their needs.

“Clients, such as financial service providers, government entities, and cloud and colocation hosts, will find the scalable and modular nature of HP Flexible DC a compelling option,” said Kfir Godrich, chief technology officer, Technology Services, HP. “HP can help clients innovate the way they build and operate a greenfield data centre for greater savings over its life span.”

The idea is that the prefabricated and standardised components will reduce both building time and the time it takes to bring an operational data centre online, “resulting in lower capital costs and faster time to market,” said HP.

Scalable Capacity

HP also says that this modular design “extends clients’ ability to increase scalable capacity while retaining specified levels of reliability and redundancy.” There are specific configurations that can optimise the use of power and cooling resources to lower energy and water use, “enabling clients to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and a facility’s carbon footprint,” said HP.

HP is also touting air-cooled, rather than water-cooled, mechanical systems in an effort to save power and “potentially millions of gallons of water annually.”

“The pressure to save on capital and operating expenditures is one of the most critical issues facing enterprises today,” said David J. Cappuccio, vice president and chief of research at analyst firm Gartner. “When building new data centres, clients need to consider options that support business growth, while also saving time and costs.”

HP Flexible DC is available through HP Critical Facilities Services, and pricing varies according to location and implementation.

HP has been bigging up its data centre expertise for a while now and has sought to challenge Cisco’s dominance in the data centre networking space, after the two companies parted company back in February. In November last year, it unveiled its new converged data centre architecture.

HP could not field a spokesperson at the time of writing, but the company apparently based its cost saving and green claims on research published in “Flexible DC – A New Approach to Industrialized IT,” Jagger, 2010.