Infomart Portland Expansion
Portland, Ore.  
Best Project

Owner: Infomart Data Centers
Lead Design Firm/General Contractor: DPR Construction
Civil/Structural Engineer: KPFF Consulting Engineers
MEP Engineer: McKinstry Co. LLC
Electrical Design/Construction: Rosendin Electric

Infomart’s data-center expansion for its tenant LinkedIn is its most technologically advanced with a server cooling system that uses both water and Oregon’s mild climate.

Designed and built in 10 months, the LEED Gold facility was broken into two phases. Cascadia 1 added a 4-MW data hall in the existing building while other data halls remained active. It has enough space for 324 server racks. Cascadia 2 expanded the building by about 100,000 sq ft to accommodate three more 4-MW data halls.

The design includes active rear-door heat exchangers (ARDs), which use water to remove heat generated by servers and other IT equipment.

“The Cascadia project team designed systems to support the approach of using active rear-door heat exchangers to provide cooling of the entire space, not just for typical supplemental cooling,” says Doug Shotwell, vice president of development for Infomart.

While other data centers have 70-75 ARDs, this center has 556 ARDs to accommodate LinkedIn’s expected growth and fluctuating needs.

The design reduces energy use compared with many data centers because each server cabinet has its own cooling system. In addition, the system uses outside air whenever possible—designers anticipate 220 days of “free cooling” each year. The system also saves energy—and is therefore less costly to run—by using warmer water instead of chilled water.

Infomart draws its power from Bonneville Power Administration sources, which includes renewable hydroelectric power from the Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River.

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