BrightRay's Johor data centre completed in 8 months

Today I visited Malaysia’s first fully prefabricated modular data centre, built faster than most people plan one. Time to completion? 8 months flat.

BrightRay launched its MY-01 data centre today, and I had the chance to tour the facility at the Sedenak Tech Park in Johor, Malaysia.

Here's a short round-up from my notes.

MY-01 data centre

Officially launched today, MY-01 is a 3-storey building within the BrightRay campus. When completely built-up, the campus will have 85.8MW of capacity across 3 data centres.

Here's some key specs:

• 16.2MW; PUE < 1.4.
• Air-cooled 12kW racks*.
• Fan wall system.
• VRLA batteries.
• Thermal storage tanks.

MY-01 is built with BrightRay's construction know-how, using modules manufactured in-house. As far as I know, this is the first data centre built this way in Malaysia.

And from my conversation with BrightRay's executive vice president Wayne Pei, a 6-month timeframe for a 30-60MW data centre is possible.

*Phase 2 will feature 500x 130kW racks.

Building fast

Here's a glimpse of the aggressive timeline for the construction of MY-01.

• 70 days for foundation.
• 7 days to assemble ground floor units.
• 7 days for the second floor.
• 8 days for the third floor and roof.
• 32 days roof pouring work, external installation.

Think about it: it takes just 22 days to "assemble" the data centre. Or 3 months from piling works to having the entire structure in place.

Unpack. Stack. Finish touches

Do you play lego? BrightRay's incredible time-to-market is possible as 90% of the parts are prefabricated at its factory.

What happens there:

• Steel structure produced.
• Modules are stack-tested.
• Pipelines and cable trays installed.
• Critical equipment installed.
• Finished modules packed.

The finished modules are then shipped to Malaysia and trucked to Sedenak, where they are pieced together.

Of course, there's some pouring of concrete at the data centre, hooking up of systems, and installation of fire-rated components. Like the stickers on your lego set.

Interesting nuggets

Some aspects of MY-01 caught my attention.

• Buying local: BrightRay sourced for local parts, too. For instance, backup diesel generators are installed on a multi-storey steel structure from local partners.
• High ceilings: Unlike cramped container-based modular data centres, each storey of MY-01 is a generous 6 to 8 metres.
• Dry coolers: While MY-01 uses cooling towers, the upcoming phase 2 and phase 3 will use dry coolers. I'll talk more about that in another post.

What do you think of the MY-01 data centre?