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AAPT was closely monitoring the heat output of customer racks in the data centre.
It capped co-location rack density at 2kW (although higher configurations were possible in separate caged areas) and served notices to customers whose racks caused "local heat problems" on parts of the data floor.
"After a few years you can almost estimate the number of Amps for a rack just by standing in front of it," said John Cafarella, AAPT's manager of field operations in Vic/Tas/WA/SA.
The telco had already shifted the ambient operating temperature for the majority of its data centres nationally from 21ºC to 23ºC as part of an sustainability initiative.
This was partly driven by arguments for greater efficiency and pressure from the continued rise in energy costs.
"We've seen a 20 percent increase in electricity costs this year alone," Yuile said.
"Obviously we've got to pass this onto customers. But do you do it, for example, as an energy levy? Personally I think the model has to shift in how we charge customers [for space]."
AAPT measured power down to the supply infrastructure level, taking measures including site and uninterruptible power supply (UPS) loads.
"If we did [the Richmond build] again, we'd put individual metering on each rack," Cafarella said.
"[AAPT] engineering is looking into it. But if you had a clean build you'd do it straight away."
Natural refresh cycles were also bringing more efficient plant into the centre.
Infrastructure sell
AAPT also plans to start testing virtual server and storage offerings mid-year in readiness for an infrastructure-as-a-service play to be launched later this year.
The service would be based non-exclusively on Sun hardware and VMware.
The strategy, according to Yuile, was two-fold: to attract customers and sell them telecommunications services, including cross-connects to other data centres and carriers.
"We will start as a company to offer infrastructure-as-a-service, to offer virtual server and storage capabilities," Yuile said.
"The virtualisation trend is continuing. We think more of our customers will become platform providers that are cloud-centric."
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