James Cook Uni wants a modular data centre

Queensland's James Cook University has approached the market for a modular data centre so it can migrate out of its two existing end-of-life facilities.

A modular data centre built by HP.

The facility will be located at its Douglas campus in Townsville.

It will replace the two existing data centres, located on the same campus, which the university has decided not to fund any longer after the facilities were assessed to be end of life.

It wants a modular data centre - one that is portable and can be located near where capacity is required - so it is able to expand when needed and even incorporate the sale of co-located space to external customers.

While a modular data centre is its preference, JCU said it would also consider a complete outsourcing option where a provider builds, owns and operates the facility and hosts the uni as a tenant.

Should the modular data centre be the final chosen option, JCU will supply some infrastructure for the provider.

It will provide two separate high-voltage feeds with transformers to power the facility, chilled water valves, a mains water connection point, waste water line, and comms pits, among other essential features.

The university has asked for a tier III data centre that offers N+1 redundancy in all components, no single points of failure, hot/cold aisle air containment, and uptime of 99.982 percent.

Its expected critical load is 150Kw between 14 and 16 racks.

JCU has said the new data centre must be fully operational before June 30 next year.

The chosen partner will also handle the ongoing maintenance and management of the facility.

"JCU’s primary focus is an education and research institution and understands that a data centre is specialist environment that requires specialist skills in the management and maintenance of data centres," the uni said in tender documents.

"JCU does not retain these specialist skills and may not be acquiring these skills in the development of the new data centre. JCU therefore wishes to outsource the ongoing management and maintenance of the data centre to an external third party that retains specialist skills in the field."

A modular data centre is a pre-packaged set of all the essential components of a data centre - like power, cooling and server racks - that can be easily deployed into an existing facility or built into a container, much faster than constructing a traditional data centre.

It gives organisations the ability to scale quickly with business requirements.

According to research firm Markets and Markets, the global market for modular data centres is expected to grow from US$8.4 billion this year to US$35.1 billion by 2020.