Queensland’s Redland City Council has deployed a new modular data centre from Vertiv as part of a strategy to reduce the risk of weather-related outages.
The solution will be implemented in a purpose-built facility elevated to protect it from weather events, which typically cause IT outages once or twice per year in the region.
If the council is affected, these outages can leave Redland’s 150,000 citizens unable to access services such as utilities, animal management and libraries.
The council says the move to the Vertiv data centre will free up between 150 to 200 square metres of space within the council previously taken up by its legacy data centres, allowing it to create more open work spaces and bring teams within the Council closer together.
{loadposition peter}The new data centre will condense the council’s IT infrastructure into a 10-rack unit that will help meet increasing demand for secure, powerful facilities to host critical IT infrastructure supporting a range of applications.
“We’re capitalising as much as we can from this move,” said Glynn Henderson, chief information officer, Redland City Council.
“Outsourcing the management of our data centre will enable our team to start focusing on smart city initiatives, which is something we’re building towards.
“We haven’t defined what that’s going to mean exactly yet, but we’re looking at IoT, how we can make our utilities management systems smart and innovation hubs to support entrepreneurs and small businesses in the community.”
Implementation of the data centre will take place this month and be completed with the assistance of Vertiv and Redland City partner Resolute IT.
“There’s plenty of hype about smart cities and IoT but it’s important to consider what infrastructure you need to pull that off,” said Robert Linsdell, managing director for Australia and New Zealand, Vertiv.
“You need something scalable, secure, robust and with as little risk of outage as possible. Redland City understands this, and they’re taking the steps now to make sure they can do the exciting part in the right way later.”