Intelligent CIO Middle East Issue 51 | Page 73

INDUSTRY WATCH THE UNIVERSITY OF DAMMAM WAS LOOKING FOR A NEW DATA CENTRE SOLUTION TO BE ABLE TO FACE THE GROWING IT DEMAND AND OPTIMISE THE NUMEROUS COMPUTER ROOMS DISTRIBUTED ACROSS ITS VARIOUS CAMPUSES. A s the University of Dammam continues to grow and develop its academic capabilities, its data centre needed to be expanded accordingly. Along with supporting the increased use of data, the university’s key goal was to boost efficiency in IT operations and maintenance. To address these growing demands, the University of Dammam found Vertiv to be the ideal partner for their new, state- of-the-art data centre. achieving energy efficiency in a hot climate the university of Dammam was looking for a new data centre solution to be able to face the growing IT demand and optimise the numerous computer rooms distributed across its various campuses. Moreover, the data centre had to serve the University Hospital which was recently expanded to an 11-storey building with a capacity of over 600 beds. Given Saudi Arabia’s challenging temperatures, the institution’s most crucial requirement was energy efficiency. A reduced footprint, rapid deployment, reliability and sustainability were also among the university’s primary needs. www.intelligentcio.com “The main objective of building this data centre is to increase efficiency by utilising resources in smart and innovative ways,” says Dr Saad AlAmri, CIO for the University of Dammam. “Vertiv has a full range of highly advanced solutions and a strong local presence in Saudi Arabia, that helped us achieve our goals.” The new data centre, provided by Vertiv and certified by the Uptime Institute as a Tier III facility, is powered by six Liebert 80-NET UPS units. These are configured to offer up to 1000 kVA of dual power and multiple independent distribution paths to the IT equipment. The system design provides a concurrently maintainable infrastructure with an expected availability of 99.982%. To be able to face the extreme climate conditions of up to 52ºC, the thermal management equipment is meticulously arranged deploying Vertiv SmartAisle containment, coupled with Liebert PDX and Liebert CRV units. Outfitted with more than a hundred Vertiv Knürr DCM Heavy-Duty Racks and Liebert MPH power distribution units (PDU), the Vertiv SmartAisle containment allows for optimised air flow in a reduced footprint. INTELLIGENTCIO 73