Blackpool and The Fylde College

With some of the highest success rates of further education colleges in the UK, Blackpool and The Fylde College has a national reputation for innovation and excellence in learning. As one of the largest further education institutions in the country, it was essential that the college provided a strategically flexible IT resource that could support both FE and HE learning requirements. In addition, the college has a policy of green and sustainable procurement, meaning the implementation of any energy intensive infrastructure had to meet its green objectives.

The college also understood that any new data centre infrastructure needed to be flexible enough to respond to future campus requirements and have additional capacity to cater for both expansion and shifts in the shape of the organisation.

After being selected as a key partner for Blackpool and The Fylde College, Datacentre UK got to work implementing a Hot Aisle Containment System (HACS) in an integrated package that was able to adjust to the varying needs of the college. Similar to Cold Aisle Containment Systems (CACS), HACS ensure hot exhaust air from the racks is contained within the aisle to enable the rest of the data centre to become a reservoir of cold air.

Our team ensured both the server and data communications cabinets were supported by a UPS and cooling solution which is scalable to 20kW N+1 redundancy. The facility utilises HACS with in row close coupled cooling with chilled water supplied by two 40kW free cooling chillers configured as N+1 with an auto changeover panel.

Datacentre UK also implemented a flexible monitoring suite that was able to easily bolt on to the college’s existing infrastructure, allowing access control and remote monitoring.

The project was completed a week ahead of schedule and received a nomination in the Innovation in the Micro Data Centre category at the Datacentre Leaders Awards.