Microsoft Unveils its Energy Efficient ITPAC to Support UN’s Greenest Building in Nairobi

Yesterday we reportedt that Microsoft Corp was to announce its first IT pre-assembled component (ITPAC) data centre technology in Africa and the developing world. The facility was launched today by UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, together with the energy-neutral building UN office in Nairobi. It servers consumes lots of power in any building. Microsoft’s ITPAC data centre is a big boosts to UN’s green technology endeavours of a carbon neutral facility.

The ITPAC centre came about as part of a public-private initiative launched in 2009 where Microsoft provided consulting advice on why the data centre would be the best for UNEP and Habitat. The facility will initially host a maximum of 400 servers and UNON says that they might need an extra two of such to replace the current energy intensive server rooms. . The data centre will also provide flexible IT capability through cloud computing.

The building explained:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zwt8W0Ux8Is

The ITPAC is easy to assemble with the UNON one taking only a few hours to put up. It was shipped in just on Tuesday and on Thursday it was ready for the launch. Microsoft’s cloud solution looks to reduce carbon emissions by 30% when compared with the Microsoft business applications installed on-premise.

The ITPAC increases energy and IT efficiency by using fresh air for primary cooling while removing the need of a mechanical AC system.  It reduces the need for water, concrete, steel, piping and copper which would have otherwise been used in a regular data centre. All the operations, diagnostics and operations of the ITPAC are electronic and speeds of the cooling can be reduced and monitored remotely. The total savings though will depend on how much UNEP will utilise the server space, the weather conditions and the computing capacity availed.

Demo of the ITPAC data centre functionality:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8rMJbEuUtQ

The ITPAC is manufactured from materials which are 98% recyclable and in case of any failure, the facility will be able to run on emergency mode and display the appropriate warnings. The materials are manufactured and installed by Savier and the components and spare parts are locally available.