Perth as the next hotspot
Unlike the East Coast capitals, the Perth data centre market is on a different scale, with DCByte rating its live capacity at 29 MW at the end of 2023. However, its proximity to Asia and excellent sub sea cable connectivity – currently better than Melbourne’s, for example – means that like its Eastern city counterparts, the market is set for growth albeit with cloud services being the driver.
One data centre operator that entered the market early is DC Alliance (DCA) when it took over Pier DC’s four-year-old Tier III facility data centre in Perth in 2020. It has already built up two megawatts of power and is looking to add another two megawatts in the next year and a half. DCA’s Uptime Institute Tier III certified colocation facility, located in Canning Vale in Perth, has a technical area of 2,200 sqm and a power capacity of up to 8MW.
“Perth is shaping to become the next hotspot due to proximity to the high growth APAC region. We believe a cloud region in WA is likely and will drive considerable growth,” DCA sales lead Natalie Parker told W.Media.
“Fundamentally, the availability and accessibility to power underpin all these opportunities. WA has a standalone energy grid (not interconnected as per eastern states) and its distribution network, historic grid stability, excess supply pool will shape any DC investment outcome,” she added.
DCA has taken a customer-led approach to developing its service offerings from colo to private hybrid cloud. DCA executive chairman and co-founder Roy Wong said the requirement for colocation space has changed with the need to cater for larger workloads such as AI. “The cooling technologies associated with higher density footprint have significant impact to traditional data centre design,” he said. “We are invested in building to customer needs and are in consultation to determine the best design for the future. A potential larger (or hyperscale) rollout is also under consideration.”
He added: “We are an engineering-led DC operator with the facility management team comprising of personnel involved in the original build. We can cater our colocation space to a wide variety of enterprises customers and challenging requests: choice of cold or hot aisle containment within a Pod, immersive cooling modules, on-chip cooling technologies and so on.”
Parker said DCA works with its vendors (alliance partners) to create bundled, fit-for-purpose solutions which combine “best of breed” and cost-effective services to suit its diverse customer base. “As per our slogan ‘supporting local industry’, we can serve the local market/industry well with our agility and cost structure,” she said.
Hybrid cloud rising in Perth
Hybrid cloud has emerged as a popular choice for organisations seeking the best of both worlds: the control and security of on-premises infrastructure combined with the scalability and flexibility of the cloud and Parker believes the fact TPG Telecom has located a Private Cloud pod in its DC means it can address this market.
“Most digital transformation projects are hybrid in nature, part-cloud (public/private), part-colo,” she said. “DCA private cloud offers greater versatility to the customer in compute, network and storage capacity and performance with regards to IaaS migration: virtual data centre offerings from bare metal to piecewise IaaS. As with every cloud resource, the network underpins the success delivery of the outcome.”
AI’s impact
Wong emphasises it is too early to see any AI impact on Perth’s DC market. There is currently no infrastructure. However, in the mid-term, he believes DC operators will start retro-fitting their facilities to suit AI workloads and in the longer term there will be considerable change in the traditional DC design due to cooling requirement and AI workload profile. And the access to power.
“Energy prices have increased significantly (partly due to recent grid instability and AEMO re-structure) with a 20-30% increase from 2022/23,” he said. “Technology advancement should see some PUE improvement although a lower PUE is more likely on a hyperscale than a multi-tenant DC.”
“Theoretical or design PUE and its perceived power savings are difficult to achieve in operations as there is limited controls over customer workload distribution,” he said. “We are unlikely to see lower power bills from DC efficiency nor energy savings as any technology improvement cannot negate the pricing increases.”
Wong pointed out that other innovations will help mitigate rising energy bills and gave the example of how cooling costs could potentially be addressed without too much effort. “There’s an over-cooling requirement on ICT workloads,” he said. “ICT hardware can operate in high temp, a lot of energy savings can be achieved otherwise.”
Hyperscalers could change things
While AI is not yet making an impact on Perth’s DC market, Parker believes the arrival of the hyperscalers offering cloud zones could transform the market in the meantime. AWS and Microsoft changed the Melbourne market. AWS has an AZ in Perth but a bigger commitment from there hyperscalers would fuel a much quicker expansion.
“Public cloud providers will need to consider (or are considering) WA/local cloud zones,” she said. “Once a public cloud lands, others will follow.” With such a presence, she said the colo market generally, including DCA will benefit from the considerable growth in IT services.
[Author: Simon Dux]