Telstra's new Clayton complex consists of two 1000 square metre halls, each with two power zones.
The telco gave a tour of the new data centre facility in eastern Melbourne on Monday 11 November.
Chilled water storage tanks have been installed for cooling IT racks during a power outage.
It takes about three seconds for the generator to run in the event of a power failure, with the chilled water cooling the racks during that interim period, Telstra said.
The two power streams are colour-coded, as is the usage - mechanical, IT, generator or UPS.
Over 100 switchboards power the UPS for the IT racks and the Computer Room Air Conditioning (CRAC) units.
The Clayton data centre has dual power supplied to every rack.
Telstra said free-air cooling was implemented to reduce energy usage.
According to the telco, hot aisle containment was selected after "full energy modelling and CFD analysis".
"Hot aisle containment ensures that there is zero mixing of supply air and hot return air, to maximise the efficiency," a spokesperson said.
Free air cooling technologies allow the facility to reduce costs by up to 6 percent per annum and in turn reduce carbon outputs.
When possible, outdoor air is used to cool the data halls.
The Computer Room Air Conditioning units "deliver the cool air to the IT racks via the raised access floor for underfloor cooling," a Telstra spokesperson said.
The back of the facility faces a residential area, and Telstra is creating "a wall of plants" to enhance "the visual aspect" of what otherwise would be a bare concrete surface - a feature the telco calls the "the growing wall".
According to the telco, all infrastructure within the Clayton complex is "concurrently maintainable", meaning components can be offline for maintenance without losing data centre capacity.
The facility has greater than "n+1" redundancy provided by three diesel generators. The data centre can continue operating even after the loss of one piece of power or cooling equipment.
There are "two high voltage feeders" to the Clayton facility: a dedicated duty feeder and a shared reserve feeder.
The diesel rotary UPS kicks in for the IT equipment if both power feeds are lost. This will provide power for up to ten seconds, by which time the diesel generator will have started.
The mechanical load will be taken on by static UPS and batteries for up to ten minutes in the same situation.
The unveiling complemented Telstra's recent announcements of cloud partnerships with Cisco and VMware.
VMware's Australian point of presence for its vCloud Air service is hosted at Clayton.
Clayton adds more than 40 percent to Telstra's current data centre capability.
Telstra's new Clayton complex consists of two 1000 square metre halls, each with two power zones.