Photos: Building Metronode's Melbourne2 data centre

Welcome to Metronode’s second Melbourne data centre, currently under construction. You’re looking at Stage One, which at full capacity would support 3MW of the 12MW available on the site. The facility has been commissioned with modularity and power efficiency in mind – it harnesses free air and evaporative air cooling and holds server racks in small cold-air contained rooms engineered by UK firm BladeRoom. The bulkier end of the building is the plant room, which features diesel generators, high voltage conversion equipment and 24 hours of fuel in N+1 configuration (one spare of everything). On the upper level is electricity switching, UPS and battery rooms in the same N+1 format – ensuring the facility is concurrently maintainable. The longer end of the building features the server room floor space laid out as lockable, free air-cooled ‘BladeRooms’.