US data centre provider Digital Realty Trust has acquired a 10-acre site in West Dublin that will be capable of supporting a massive 193,000 sq-foot data centre requiring 11.5 megawatts of electricity.
The site at Profile Park is 24 kilometres southwest of Dublin Airport. It is part of a growing digital cluster in Clondalkin that includes TelecityGroup Europe as well as Microsoft’s US$500m data centre and the latest US$75m data centre built by Google.
“Dublin remains an important data centre market for both local and multinational corporations, including large technology and internet companies, as well as IT service providers,” said Michael F Foust, CEO of Digital Realty.
“Using our phased development approach, this site will enable us to support our customers’ expanding data centre needs by bringing data centre space online efficiently in terms of both time and cost.”
Building the internet capital of Europe
Backed by a Californian pension fund, Digital Realty Trust has been buying more than 13m sq feet of data centres around the world, including two in Dublin.
Since establishing its HQ office in 2006, Digital Realty Trust has invested almost €120m in Ireland and employs 30 full-time staff across European marketing, IT, corporate accounting, portfolio management and technical operations.
“Dublin has an ideal climate for deploying an indirect air optimisation design. This significantly improves a data centre’s energy efficiency by lowering its PUE (power utilisation efficiency) and therefore its total cost of occupancy.
“We expect to achieve PUEs of around 1.15 in our Profile Park facility, a substantial reduction from the electrical consumption typically required for cooling a data centre,” added Adam Levine, vice-president in charge of sales for Digital Realty.
“The acquisition of this site enables us to provide customers with both large and smaller requirements through a variety of flexible data centre solutions to meet their needs. Our Turn-Key Datacentres have a six-year record of 99.999pc uptime. For our customers, this means they can focus on their operations while we maintain and operate the supporting power and cooling systems for maximum resiliency.”
Ireland CEO Barry O’Leary said Digital Realty’s proposal to provide a substantial new data centre footprint in Dublin will be a great addition to the existing infrastructure here and strongly enhances Ireland’s attractiveness as a leading location for international services activity.
“The new site will deploy the latest eco-friendly technology, which when complemented with Irish weather conditions, will result in one of the most energy-efficient facilities in the world.”
