UMass Med Plans $16M Data Center
Photo/Christina H. Davis
The University of Massachusetts Medical School is building a $16 million data center at its South Street campus in Shrewsbury to replace two older data centers, according to school officials.
UMass Medical has two data centers. One that’s 20 years old and a second one that is about 10 years old. The two older data centers together are about 3,500 square feet.
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The project will be about 20,000 square feet. It will include a 7,000 square feet for the data center, 8,000 square feet for support space and office space and a conference room for the school’s IT department, according to Paul Hanbury, the data center project manager for the school.
“We wanted to come up with a way that gives us the flexibility to provide for any type of computer needs that come in the door,” Hanbury said. “The school has so many different facets; we don’t just do one thing here.”
The new data center will be “state-of-the-art” using as many green practices as possible, such as heating and cooling systems that incorporate outside air to reduce costs and flywheel energy storage technology instead of batteries for the uninterruptable power supply.
The data center was also designed to keep as much as the cabling, cooling and other mechanical support out of the data center itself and in an adjacent room to be able to cool the room more efficiently, Hanbury said.
“We’ll be able to just turn off the lights,” Hanbury said. “The only time we’ll need to go in is to add or remove a server.”
The flywheels last up to 20 years compared to about four years for the average battery, and there are no toxic substances to dispose of once the flywheels fail, he said.
As long as the outside air temperature is 65 and under, the HVAC system will use outside air to help chill the data center, which is more energy efficient.
It is scheduled to be in use by January or February 2010.
Tishman Construction Corp. of New York is the construction manager for the project, and provided planning and pre-construction service to the school.
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