The Vertical Solution to the Big Data Space Crunch
Is Vert the Future of Data Centers?
The data we store and manage continues to grow exponentially. What is not growing is the available data center space in urban areas around North America. The result is more and more dependence on increasingly outdated server hubs located in only a few favorable areas. The prefabricated Vert.center vertical module, however, offers a permanent solution to this data roadblock.
What Vert Does Differently
Both web hosts and companies that maintain their own servers assemblies often encounter space problems: The ideal places to house servers do not always come with reasonable costs or environmental controls, severely limiting options when placing server bankers.
The Vert module, however, dares to think outside the box in a very literal way. Vert is based on ideas used when building the supercomputer data center at Laval University in Quebec City. This computer was used to monitor a particle accelerator built inside an cylindrical silo: Finding a way to fit a data center in that silo required rethinking structure, cooling, and many other factors.
Now, Vert is carrying that thought into a new modular data design through Canada and the United States that allows companies to build their data centers in all-new areas where real estate is limited.
The model is based on prefabricated modules that can be altered to a company’s needs. The average module has a footprint of 1,200 square feet, but companies can build upwards if they choose, up to four different floors that combine to create a continuous data center. Each standard design offers enough space for 120 24-inch IT racks and 1.2 megawatts of critical load. Each uses a multi-mode economizer for cooling that blows cold air from the bottom level into the upper floors using either cold water or cool air, depending on outside temperatures. Hot exhaust air is pushed out of the top of the structure.
This new, vertical method of developing IT modules promises a new data center future, a new paradigm for data management where space is no longer an issue and the growing high density challenges no longer present insurmountable difficulties.