DataVita Glasgow Data Centre

Colo-X analysis

The DataVita Glasgow data centre is a very well thought out and properly constructed 16MW/2000 rack purpose built data centre for the Scottish market. It is one of only a handful of UK data centres with official Uptime Institute Tier 3 certification for both design and build.

Delivered as two distinct “availability zones” with two 500 rack data halls in Phase1 and a similar number to come.  Solutions include colocation racks delivered in 56 rack cold aisle contained pods, with choice on both rack size and power density, but an average density of 4.2kW per rack.  Larger solutions for dedicated pods of 235kW, entire halls or part halls also available.  DataVita is the second site for LINX in Scotland with Zayo and SSE networks available.

DataVita Glasgow facility description

The DatVita Fortis data centre opened in Q4 2016 and is located about 15 miles due east of Glasgow city centre adjacent to Junction 6A of the M8, the main motorway between Glasgow and Edinburgh.  This brand new, purpose built data centre is backed by HFD Group, a Scottish commercial property company who have delivered over 2 million square feet of office and leisure developments.

As their first foray into the data centre industry HFD have certainly aimed to deliver a quality, well thought out development, as evidenced for example by both Design and Construction Tier 3 Certification by the Uptime Institute, one of only a handful of UK data centres to have this dual certification and surely no better way to instill customer confidence.

The site consists of two entirely indpedendent but connected buildings operated as one, each able to offer two data halls of aproximately 1000 square metres net technical space supporting 500 racks each, thus total capacity of 4000 sq m and 2000 racks.  At present there are two data halls in service, one on each side of the site, with each “Availability Zone” benefitting from its own power and cooling infrastructure.

Total site power of 16MW is deliered by fully redundant 11kV feeds with scope to increase this to 24MW when required.  A+B power to each rack with N+N topology.  With the Scottish climate providing an average year round temperature of 8C indirect adiabiatic cooling technology provides all the cooling throughout the year without the need for mechanical refrigerant cooling and the design PUE is 1.18 at full load.  Energy used is 100% renewable.

There are four data halls, two of which are sold to individual customers and the balance available for colocation on a per-rack or even part-rack basis. Dedicated quarter rack and half rack units are available. In general there is a 2N power distribution to each cabinet.  The Amito colocation package includes unlimited onsite support, allowing clients to ship all new hardware for installation or even smaller tasks such as memory upgrades, part failure handling etc

Rack colocation is available in shared pods of 56 racks each, with contained cold aisles, racks are 47U and available in 600 or 800 wide and 1000 or 1200mm deep.  Dual 32Amps power feeds as standard and power can vary from 1kW up to 30kW, with an average design density of 4.2kW per rack.  Other onsite facilities include build rooms, conference rooms, break out areas and secure storage all available for customer use.

Finally regarding network DataVita are AS57022 and the full carrier list is below.  The LINX exchange point has only limited traction thus far with Facebook the one existing user of this site and this being the company’s only LINX connection in Scotland.  DataVita are also part of the Scottish Government’s cloud services framework, allowing the company to offer public sector bodies access to both their cloud and colocation services.

Technical stats