Wholesale colocation provider Kao Data has been working together with the OCP Foundation in a pilot program to make its Kao Data London One facility OCP-Ready. OCP is working with two data centers – one US-based, and one in Europe (Kao Data) – to this end.
The recently completed Kao Data London One 8.8MW data center has completed the first two steps of the program, joining the Data Centre Facility (DCF) project within OCP and becoming the first data center to self-audit against Open Compute’s checklist for compliance with its engineering principles. The process will be complete when Kao Data presents its results during the OCP Regional Summit, Amsterdam, October 1 – 2, 2018.
“Kao Data has been through the self-audit and guidelines laid out by the Data Centre Facility Project, and has been working with the OCP Foundation to achieve recognition as an OCP approved facility,” said Steve Helvie, VP of Channel at Open Compute Project. “We’re really excited to have Kao Data working with OCP as one of only two colocation data center providers in this pilot program. It’s a first for Europe.”
The OCP Data Centre Facility project was developed to maximize the mechanical performance and thermal and electrical efficiency of Open Compute Project servers. The project comprises electrical and mechanical components and focuses its efforts on five functional areas of the data center including power, cooling, IT space layout and design, facility management & control, and facility operations.
“This is an immense achievement for Kao Data,” said Jan Daan Luycks, CEO of Kao Data. “As an OCP Member, we strongly believe that the values of openness and collaboration espoused by the OCP Foundation provide an independent spur to innovation in the data center sector. Kao Data London One was developed to offer a leading-edge approach to data center flexibility and scalability, while maintaining class-leading resilience and efficiency in a modern and highly competitively priced facility.”
ASHRAE TC 9.9 Environmental Standards
Kao Data London One was designed and constructed to deliver power efficiency and resilience, low cost of operations as a result of reduced electrical and mechanical engineering complexity, standardization, and fast deployment capability. The facility uses Indirect Evaporative Cooling with no mechanical refrigeration to meet ASHRAE TC 9.9 environmental standards delivering a low PUE <1.2 even at partial load.
“Kao Data has embraced ideas found only elsewhere in hyper-scale data centers to deliver a high efficiency, highly flexible facility which is the first to be audited to meet the demands of the OCP user community,” said John Laban, a well-known data center consultant and ambassador for the OCP Foundation. “It’s a great achievement and we look forward to completing the process.”
After extensive on-site assessments of the data center, which has been in operation since January 2018, Kao Data London One has been self-audited as structurally, technically and operationally capable of providing organizations deploying Open Compute Project designed solutions and equipment with an infrastructure platform which meets the central design concepts laid out in the OCP Data Centre Facility project.
