The design team needed to provide Dell EMC with a solution that minimized their up-front costs and supported future growth. To achieve this, the center’s electrical systems were modeled such that additional unit substations with large transformers could be inserted into the system as needed through back-of-house electrical rooms, leaving the electrical infrastructure in the labs and data centers intact. The goal was to reduce the downtime required for additional power increases and to eliminate disturbances to the built environment, thus preventing revenue loss. Further increasing efficiency by reducing the number of electrical transformations, unit substations used on this project stepped down the medium voltage from the utility directly to the voltage needed at the rack level.
Center of Excellence
After Dell EMC acquired a pre-engineered warehouse spanning a massive 450,000 sf, they began the relocation of their over-capacity data center in Westborough, MA into a newly developed, energy efficient, and virtual state-of-the-art facility. Aptly named the North American Center of Excellence, the Tier III data center is designed to support Dell EMC’s pursuit of delivering IT as a service (ITaaS).
SMMA provided a flexible and scalable design solution to transform the existing structure: currently, it consolidates all regional Dell EMC research, development, and proof-of-concept labs, supports the client’s consulting, development, and technical services, and showcases Dell EMC and partner solutions.
Additionally, the move boasts of several sustainable feats:
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Increasing virtual servers from 32% to 100%
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Leveraging virtualization to save 271 Watts per server
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Reducing power per TB by 73%
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Saving 1.2 megawatts of power demand