Mechanical Contractor

Network Appliance (NetApp)

Last Updated on Thursday, 21 January 2010 19:07 Written by Administrator Thursday, 14 January 2010 03:33

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Building 4 – Rack Electronics Laboratory with Tier III Data Center

Research Triangle Park, NC

building4

NetApp’s relocation of the company’s data storage center from its California headquarters to North Carolina is part of the company’s ongoing restructuring plan and entailed the construction of a new rack electronics laboratory located on its Research Triangle Park campus. NetApp will further its research initiatives to create more energy efficient data centers.

The 124,000 sf building is a 3-story special purpose facility to house 2,160-racks of data processing equipment.  The building includes lab space, infrastructure systems which provide power and cooling to the lab, and support space including an executive briefing center, loading dock, equipment staging/storage and general office. It contains a Tier III data center.

Each 52U rack is capable of housing up to 12 kW of equipment. The building’s infrastructure incorporates Network Appliance’s evolutionary and innovative approach to cooling equipment racks and involves the construction of 36 cold rooms. Each cold room houses 60 racks of equipment. The air conditioning volume to the racked equipment is controlled based on cold room static pressure. Elevated supply air temperatures allow for the use of outside air as the sole cooling medium 65% of the year. In terms of energy efficiency, the building is expected to meet EPA’s 2011 performance criteria for state of the art data centers. It is designed for 72 w/sf.

The new facility will be utilized as a global engineering resource for Network Appliance engineering centers worldwide, and will include furthering research development initiatives to create more energy conscious data centers. Acorn Industrial served as both the mechanical and plumbing contractors. Acorn's scope of work included installation of eighty specialized air handling units, four 2000 ton TRANE chillers, and all associated pumps and piping.