Verne Global Expands Iceland Data Centre With More Colt Modules

Verne Global has expanded its renewable-powered data centre in Iceland using Colt‘s modular design.

Verne’s data centre at a former NATO air base in Keflavik, Iceland, is built using modules which are shipped from a Colt factory in the UK. The company has just signed for more modules which will be made and shipped, so new capacity can go live inside the Verne building – effectively a warehouse – in the third quarter of 2013.

Ship us more modules!

Launched in 2010, Colt’s modular data centre, now branded as ftec, pre-fabricates a data centre in sections which can be shipped to their eventual home in May and bolted together on-site. The approach combines the mobility of a container-based system, with the efficiency of a custom-designed building, Colt says.

Verne reports increasing demand for its data centre which uses renewable energy from two sources – hydroelectric and geothermal – and makes use of increasing fibre-optic bandwidth between Iceland and the US and Europe. Iceland’s cool temperature enables the data centre to operate without air conditioning, reducing the PUE (power usage effectiveness) efficiency measure to around 1.2.

“As cloud, mobile and big data applications drive organisations to look for cutting edge solutions for their data storage needs, interest in our Icelandic facility continues to gain momentum and we find ourselves needing to expand our current footprint,” said Jeff Monroe, CEO for Verne Global. Verne’s customers include BMW, which moved its supercomputing to the Verne site in 2012.

TechWeekEurope visited the Keflavik site in February 2012 (pictures below), as well as taking a look at Iceland’s renewable energy sources. The comapny also produced a time lapse video of the data centre’s building – embedded below.

“It’s the consumerisation of the data centre,” Bernard Geogheghan, Colt’s vice president for data centre spaces told us at the launch event. “We have a defined build, at a defined price. We tell you exactly what it will do. PUE has always been a ‘design PUE’ – we bring you a defined PUE”.

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