ICONZ, one of New Zealand’s first Internet Service Providers, is implementing power protection and cooling solutions from Emerson Network Power to ensure business-critical continuity at its newly-built data centre in Auckland.

The new data centre extends ICONZ’s existing hosting services infrastructure, allowing it to provide robust solutions to customers that include managed services, web hosting, dial-up and broadband internet, fibre optic and frame relay transport, email and eCommerce services via both wireline and wireless internet connections for home and business.

“Our data centre business is growing rapidly, and we're already two-thirds full after only 12 months of sales – and that’s including the new data centre,” says Sean Weekes, Chief Operating Officer, ICONZ. “To facilitate this growth, power and cooling systems had to be very reliable and scalable so that we could add, for example, process cooler modules to provide additional cooling as we filled the space.”

Weekes says that critical power and cooling are two of the three legs (the third being network infrastructure) that are required for a modern data centre.

“All three are utterly vital for stability, scalability and reliability,” says Weekes. “Insufficient power or cooling will result in, at best, cessation of sales and interruption of cash flow and growth, and at worst, failed equipment due to thermal issues caused by excessive heat, or outages and dead equipment caused by power overloads. Downtime is not an option for our customers, which is why we ensure our facilities are protected by proven power and cooling technologies.”

Nick van der Plas, Country Manager, Emerson Network Power New Zealand, says that in a business-critical environment like ICONZ “you can’t cut corners on your most important business-continuity components.”

“Companies are increasingly implementing higher density equipment, up to and including blade-based chassis,” says van der Plas. “One blade server consumes more power – and emits much more heat – than traditional server configurations, so expelling this additional heat – which may or may not be uniform across the data centre floor – is the biggest challenge for most data centre managers today.”

Emerson’s solution is based on Emerson’s Liebert PeX precision environmental control system and two Liebert NX 80 NeXt-generation Uninterruptible Power Systems (UPS). A third UPS is currently in the process of being added, plus an additional PeX unit. Emerson is also working with ICONZ to upgrade the building’s electrical reticulation and develop another floor for dedicated high-density loads.

“We’ve had 100 per cent uptime of the network core ever since we went live with the new data centre, and are in the process of reinforcing our infrastructure for further growth,” says Weekes.

“Our biggest challenge is to ensure that both the power and cooling can be solidly provided, yet be flexible enough to deal with density, which can vary from a rack full of SAN and blade servers, down to a rack full of tower desktop cases lying on their sides. Emerson have been able to help us with all of this in a timely and professional manner.”

About Emerson Network Power

Emerson Network Power, a business of Emerson (NYSE: EMR), provides a full spectrum of reliable power solutions, including inbound power, connectivity, power supplies, power protection systems and precision cooling, backed by the largest global services organisation in the power industry. Emerson Network Power serves the needs of telecommunications networks, data centres, health care and industrial facilities worldwide. For information, visit

http://www.emersonnetwork.com.au.

About Emerson

St. Louis-based Emerson is a global leader in bringing technology and engineering together to provide innovative solutions to customers in process control; electronics and telecommunications; industrial automation; heating, ventilating and air conditioning; and appliance and tools. Sales in fiscal 2006 were US$20.1 billion.