Chinese University of Hong Kong

In 2013, TURNKEY was appointed to design and build an expansion and upgrade of a Data Centre of a Research Institute in Hong Kong.

The area of this Data Centre is approximately 88 sq.m. The Data Centre provides high-performance computing services for genomics, life science and bioinformatics research to the Institute and the requirements of the project are not limited to the architectural, mechanical and electrical systems. All of these requirements must also be complied with the relevant local and international standards and codes of practices in order to meet the deployment of the Data Centre now and in the future.

TURNKEY was appointed and assigned to the design and build of the expansion project. As a results of the high density nature of the research works, high precision cooling system and technologies were adapted to meet the requirement of the operations, which including the installation of two new refrigerant CRACs with outdoor condensers,  in-row and top of the rack cooling units to maximize the cooling capacity .

The project is highlighted by the change the usage of existing chiller water to a “water-free” refrigerant solution.  In addition, the most complicated part of this year-long project was to construct the data centre in phases due to work requirements and site limitation.  In order to maintain the normal operation of then existing data centre without interruption, the project was divided into 3 phases.  The most challenging part was to maintain a dust-free environment while one critical downtime for server relocation at the end of Phase Two is allowed.

After the expansion and upgrade, the data centre is finally capable of hosting 23 nos. of 7kW equipment racks and 9 nos. of 14kW equipment racks respectively.  The Data Centre was designed and built by following the Tier 3 Data Centre Standard and TIA-942 Data Center Standards, and now, the Data Centre is the highest-density and high performance data centre in Hong Kong.

The project was successfully completed in 2014.  TURNKEY was responsible for the data center design and build, as well as the provision of the Maintenance Services for the entire project.

TURNKEY  was assigned again to enhance the facility inside the data centre for the design and build the Containment Door with soft vinyl curtain in 2019.