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74 E L EC TR I C AL CONNEC T I ON
W I N T E R 20 1 6
1960s, the military first used it as a radar
control centre; then in the late ‘80s they
started transforming the area into a
data centre.
This meant Rockan just needed to
upgrade the space to meet current
standards. This dramatically cut the
installation costs.
Rockan used Schneider Electric’s
estimating model, which allows
companies to gauge the cost of a project
relative to similar jobs. Frederik says
the estimating model calculated the
installation costs to be approximately one
15th of the normal cost of an equivalent
sized data centre.
Not having to install traditional
expensive cooling systems greatly
reduced the construction costs as well
as the on-going running costs.
The bed rock encapsulating the
centre is Nordic granite, one of the
hardest materials on earth. Since the
rock is a huge heat sink and has a high
rate of thermal conductivity, it keeps
a stable low temperature when heat
is conducted into it from the warm
operational data centre hardware.
Given the facility is in such a cold
climate, the rocks can hold a constant
10ºC. It is only if the server space is
full that extra ventilation is required to
supplement the natural cooling through
the great rock heat sink.
Granite rock is an igneous rock,
generally light in colour. This reduces
the absorption of ambient heat,
adding to the power saving thermal
benefits of its natural form of cooling
through conductivity of the rock. This
gives the centre exceptional power
usage effectiveness.
“We can hold up to 500 racks without
additional cooling, which is a tremendous
amount,” Frederik says. The total
amount of racks which can be hosted
is 1,150 racks.
Rockan also plans to cleverly use the
existing space to carry out the ventilation
process if needed.
The facility was originally built
with a 1km blast wave tunnel so the
facility could withstand a 2.5MT direct
nuclear strike.
“We are going to use the tunnel to
take heat out when temperatures reach
a certain level and additional cooling is
needed,” Frederik says.
“There is a liquid developed by MIT we
can use; it brings hot air into water for
highly efficient cooling.”
The liquid is sprayed on the hot air
and instantly turns it into purified water
which is led into circulation again.
The company has further plans for
energy efficiency by finding effective
ways to use the heat created by the
servers. Specifically, Frederik says
the company has plans to construct a
greenhouse on the site to repurpose
excess heat, as opposed to allowing it to
dissipate into the air.
The security measures that go
into protecting the facility sound like
something out of a James Bond movie.
There is a 3m high barb wire fence all
around the centre’s perimeter; each pole
of the fence is equipped with 360º heat
sensitive cameras.
While there are three entry points in
the mountain, all of the points are blocked
off by several class 13, security vault blast
doors. The one that does allow access to
the mountain has a
guard monitoring everyone who
comes in; there is a finger print sensor,
a biometric scan and an access code.
Phones, metal and magnetic objects are
also taken off anyone entering the facility
until they exit.
Clients need never visit the site
because Rockan offers ‘intelligent hands’
support. So Rockan technicians can carry
out IT tasks for clients without them ever
stepping foot in Sweden.
Frederik says if requested, Rockan
can take over a company’s entire
IT department.
If clients do chose to visit the site,
Rockan offers to take them via helicopter
to the site from a nearby Swedish airport.
Although there are roads leading up to
the centre it is a two-and-a-half
hour drive from Stockholm, so the
company built a heli-pad for faster and
easier access to major cities, airports
and suppliers.
Looking to the future Frederik says
the company is looking more and
more into automation and data centre
information matrix systems to better
track information.
On a larger scale, Frederik thinks
Scandinavia as a whole will be a
bigger player than ever before in data
management due to electricity tax cuts,
the development of major trans-Atlantic
cabling, investment in renewable energy
sources such as hydro and of course
the cold climate. Sweden’s average
temperature is just 5°C.
Since the oil crisis in the 1970s Sweden
has invested heavily in the search for
alternative energy sources. At that
time oil accounted for more that 75%
of Swedish energy supplies; today it
accounts for around 20%.
Many large tech companies are already
investing in data storage in the Nordic
region and many are experimenting in
alternative energy sources.
Google has a data centre in Finland
which uses sea water from the Bay of
Finland in a high-tech cooling system
and Facebook has a data centre run
primarily from renewable energy in
Northern Sweden.
Rockan’s success in minimising energy
consumption and improving data
systems security reflects the engineering
ingenuity that is likely to be a growing
trend as the industry rapidly evolves to
accommodate rising demands for data
growth and security while minimising
costs and minimising adverse impacts on
the environment.
> Rockan
www.rockan.com