Petroleum Geo-Services (PGS), the oil exploration surveyor, has appointed Keysource to expand its data centre at the head office in Weybridge, Surrey. The latest development will incorporate an innovative chiller free design,  which will deliver 100 per cent indirect free cooling by taking advantage of the ambient outside temperatures. This will enable PGS to reduce capital and ongoing expenditure without compromising on availability or performance.

The data centre expansion is due for completion at the beginning of 2014 and will increase the capacity to 2.7MW of IT load, 50 per cent more than the original design. All cooling plant will be located externally to the building allowing PGS to maximise the internal rack footprint. This will include 188 rack positions, supporting up to 30kW per rack, to allow PGS to take advantage of high performance computing.

Mike Turff, Global Compute Resources Manager at Petroleum Geo-Services commented: “Keysource fully understands our business and operational needs, so has developed a second phase solution that will build on the success of the initial facility to deliver enhanced performance and meet our exact requirements. Their flexibility and energy to always look for improvement along with their ongoing management and support will enable us to effectively grow our IT operations in this data centre.”

Andy Hayes, Director of Keysource said: “Due to business growth and changing requirements PGS needed to support a higher facility IT capacity than the original phase 1 design, whilst achieving added improvements in efficiency and performance. The flexibility and scalability of our modular approach, using the award-winning ecofris cooling solution, means we have been able to develop a highly-innovative, chiller free design that will meet PGS’ precise needs moving forward.”

Opened in 2008, the initial phase of the PGS data centre was the first facility to use the ecofris cooling solution. It was designed for 600kW of IT from day one and scalable to 1.8MW, and has delivered an annualised PUE of 1.15 since becoming operational. The efficient design and ongoing optimisation has saved over six million kWh in annual power consumption when compared to the company’s previous data centre.