University of Canterbury central library and campus.
The University of Canterbury is exploring options to outsource the management of its primary data centre, housed at its Dovedale campus in Christchurch.
The Dovedale data centre was originally built to house a supercomputer in 2009 with an upgrade to its generator and power system undertaken in 2011 to allow for more load.
The supercomputer has since been removed and, with the university now migrating workloads to cloud facilities, the datacentre's footprint is now larger than required.
The data centre sits within a new creative technology precinct, formally called the Digital Screen Campus, which will be providing facilities for corporate production companies, gaming conventions, and other cutting-edge film-industry prospects.
The Dovedale computer room was to accommodate 312kW of IT equipment load and a cooling system update is happening this year to support around half that load.
While modelled on tier 3 standards when built, the facility was not certified for that.
The building also houses critical infrastructure supporting the operation of the wider Dovedale campus, including emergency backup power generation, a building management system, electrical distribution and a central boiler plant.
A request for information has been posted inviting interested parties to propose options for the management and operation of the data centre.
The university will be an anchor tenant, but the successful candidate could offer the facility to other clients.
The university also operates a secondary datacentre at Ilam, which is out of the scope of the current request for information.
Internal and external fibre management, the secondary data centre in Ilam, the boiler plant and electrical distribution infrastructure as well as the campus emergency backup power generation are also not in scope.
The university is also upgrading its ERP software to SaaS.
