- Case Study
- The Co-op Data Centres
The Co-op Data Centres
Case StudyAbout
The Co-op is one of the world’s largest consumer co-operatives, owned by millions of members. It is the UK’s fifth biggest food retailer with more than 2,500 stores, the UK’s number one funeral services provider, a major general insurer and a growing legal services business.
The Project
Sudlows have worked with the Co-op for over 10 years and have been responsible for designing, building and maintaining its three major data centres across separate sites in Greater Manchester.
From an initial appointment in 2007, Sudlows have continued to work closely with the Co-op to ensure its critical infrastructure is constantly updated and suited to the growing and changing needs of the business and the sectors within which it operates. This has all been achieved without any disruption or downtime to their live data centre facilities.
2007 – Rochdale
Following a tender process, Sudlows were commissioned to design and build a single Tier II, 30 cabinet data hall comprising 20 x 7kW medium density N+1 DX cooled cabinets and 10 x 25kW high density N+1 water cooled cabinets.
Value: c£700,000
2008 – OBB
Sudlows undertook a full CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) analysis and a complete reconfiguration of existing IT racks with migration into new secure IT cabinets within a live data centre. This was complimented with the installation of cold aisle containment which provided a significant improvement to the room cooling environment.
Value: c£150,000
2009 – Salford
Sudlows were commissioned to design and build a Tier II medium density cabinet facility incorporating 96 IT cabinets supported by cutting edge DX (N+1) cooling technology and an electrical infrastructure upgrade. The existing site generator was also synchronised with two new 800kVa generators.
Value: c£2 million
2010 – Rochdale
The design and build of a second Tier II data hall was required at the Rochdale site. Sudlows commissioned a 16 cabinet facility incorporating 6 x 7kW medium density DX cooled cabinets and 10 x 25kW high density water cooled cabinets combined with a 1MW site power upgrade through the installation of a dedicated data centre transformer and HV ring.
Value: c£1 million
2011 – Salford
Sudlows were commissioned to design and build a new Tier III compliant 2MW data centre with an efficiency performance target of PUE 1.2. The facility incorporated 70 low, medium and high-density IT cabinets and utilised a variety of leading cooling technologies. Critical back up power was delivered by two electro-diesel rotary UPS units deployed in an A and B arrangement for 2N resilience topology in a multi-award winning project which raised the bar in the industry.
Value: c£3.5 million
2013 – Tytherington
A new Tier III compliant medium density data hall was designed and built by Sudlows incorporating 48 x 7Kw IT cabinets in a cold aisle containment arrangement. The associated MEP infrastructure included 800kVa UPS (400kVa at 2N) and two chilled water circuits supporting four indoor CRAC units supplied via dual diverse power supplies.
Value: c£1.2 million
2014 – Rochdale
A third Tier II data hall was design and built by Sudlows at this site which comprised of a 32 cabinet facility incorporating 32 x 7kW medium density racks cooled by 2N diverse DX and Eco-cool systems. Sudlows also carried out a site infrastructure upgrade to deliver a secondary standby power ‘B’ path delivering a Tier III maintainable topology.
Value: c£2 million
2016 – Rochdale
Sudlows installed UPS support to transform the alternate ‘B’ power path from secondary standby support to an active path providing dual, diverse and conditioned power to the ICT cabinets.
Value: c£300,000
Conclusion
The size and changing nature of the Co-op’s business over the last decade has required an efficient and resilient infrastructure to support it.
The excellent collaborative partnership philosophy adopted by all the stakeholders in each project has ensured that each upgrade has been completed on time and to budget, giving the Co-op a critical infrastructure that will support the business well into the future.
Location
Greater Manchester, UK
Value
circa £10million
Duration
+10 years
Find out how we can release the full potential of your building and communications infrastructure.
