M247, the Manchester based Internet infrastructure company with its headquarters in Trafford Park, has today taken delivery of its second electrical substation at a cost of £80k.
Installed to power the new M247 data centre which is nearing completion, the substation was delivered by Electricity North West and once fully connected and working, will supply a 32 amp A + B feeds to all server rack footprints in the datacentre with an N+1 UPS set up.
The new M247 datacentre will have capacity for 300 racks containing thousands of servers and related ICT hardware. Under normal circumstances, all of these would consume a huge amount of energy but M247 has an energy efficiency track record that few can beat inside Europe. The first datacentre M247 built in Manchester uses a sophisticated system to monitor and control power useage and server cooling. M247, which operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, currently hosts approximately 60000 websites and has customers in every time zone with a high capacity network connected to most of the major cities in Europe including a direct link there that by-passes the busy and often congested London networks.
M247 reinvests significant funding into R&D, part of which is used to further develop this energy efficient system so that the company becomes even less dependent on expensive power which is a significant part of any data centre’s running costs. The system was mostly developed in-house by M247 engineers and currently saves 1000 tons of carbon dioxide each year.
Chris Byrd, technical director of M247 said “When we first set up our company structure in 2009 after moving from London, there was a good power infrastructure in Trafford Park as a legacy of its industrial past. That said, Electricity North West had to dig up the road and bring the infrastructure closer to our buildings at a significant cost. With our high capacity network and multiple point connectivity, we’ve enabled other highly connected business to benefit from setting up on our doorstep. This has been a positive spin-off as we are beginning to attract other connected companies in what might perhaps develop into something of a technology campus”.
Chris also says ”We would like to consider that our new carrier neutral data centre and all of our network and connectivity investments will have an important role to play in the digital economy of the region”.