Interoute wins environmental award for data centre energy saving innovation

Newly developed enhancements to Interoute’s Geneva data centre reduce its energy consumption by 1.7GW hours per year

London, UK – 15 May, 2018 – Interoute, the global cloud and network company, has received the SIG GIGA Trophy in recognition of its successful efforts to increase energy efficiency and reduce the CO2 consumption of its data centre in Geneva, Switzerland. The trophy is awarded to companies in Switzerland that demonstrate a long-term commitment to improving energy efficiency, and those who have reduced electricity consumption by more than one gigawatt hour per year.

Phil Martin, VP for Network Services Engineering at Interoute, commented, “We are delighted to receive The Giga Trophy which rewards companies’ work to reduce energy consumption within their local communities. The amount of energy we now save annually is enough to power a small Swiss village for a year. Becoming more energy efficient not only benefits the environment, it also helps us manage costs and make our services more competitive saving hundreds of thousands of Euros each year.”

Interoute has achieved the energy savings by implementing a variety of cooling and power improvements. These include:

• A custom-made cold aisle containment system. Approximately 1,000 racks in the data centre were each fitted with custom-made cold aisle containment doors and panels. The new system means that only the racks are cooled rather than the whole room, which in turn reduces overall energy expenditure. It ensures consistent and predictable airflow to eliminate server hotspots. It also enables the introduction of specific set temperatures to create the most efficient operating environment for the IT equipment in each aisle.
• Unique under-floor cooling pathways. The team further augmented the cold aisle containment system by building sealed pathways under the raised floor to ensure cold air was sent directly to the containment systems. Likened to a complex geometry challenge, the result has approximately halved the amount of underfloor space needing to be cooled, providing a considerably energy saving given the 2,200m² data centre footprint. The pathways also accommodate technical requirements such as cable trays for fibre and copper wiring and space for fire detection systems.
• A new and enhanced cooling system. The existing 58 cooling units that used a fixed fan speed have now been adapted to accommodate variable fan speeds. This enables fan speeds to be accurately matched to demand, in order to avoid excess power usage. In addition to this, the data centre has been fitted with new 1.2MW free cooling infrastructure. On cold days this brings in air from the outside to help cool down the IT equipment, reducing the need for powered cooling units even further.
• Introduction of static Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) systems. Half of the existing rotary UPS systems have been replaced with new, static UPS systems, which are more energy efficient.
• Re-balancing of IT loads. Where possible, servers have been consolidated and loads concentrated into fewer racks, enabling cooling and equipment to be shut down in emptied areas.

Interoute’s 15 data centres connect to over 126 cities, including 29 city networks. They are designed for the delivery of IaaS and virtualised services, as well as colocation and managed hosting services. The data centre services are backed by robust SLAs and provide a range of flexible alternatives to on-premise IT infrastructure and hosting, for enterprise customers.

About Interoute

Interoute is the owner-operator of one of Europe’s largest networks and a global cloud services platform which encompasses 72,000 route kilometres of fibre, 15 data centres, 17 virtual data centres and 51 colocation centres. Its advanced fibre optic network services international enterprises, global service providers, mobile operators, governments, OTT (over-the-top) and internet service providers, and channel partners. It connects in excess of 195 additional third-party data centres across Europe, America, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and network partners across the globe. Its full-service Unified ICT platform provides solutions for enterprises seeking  connectivity and a scalable, secure advanced platform on which they can build their voice, video, computing and data services, With established operations throughout Europe and USA, Interoute also owns and operates 24 connected city networks within Europe’s major business centres. www.interoute.com

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