Data centre opens and closes

Dubbed 'Australia’s Digital Fortress' the $220 Million Polaris Data Centre, a disaster, terrorist and earthquake proof ICT Facility, will open — and close — at 10.30 am on Tuesday 3 February.

The Tier 3+ data storage facility is located in the Queensland satellite town of Greater Springfield, 25 km west from Brisbane and will be 'opened for business' by the Hon Robert Schwarten, State MP Minister for Public Works, Housing and Information and Communication. It will then be immediately locked down behind an impenetrable wall of bulletproof glass, biometric fingerprint scanners, dark fibre network and state-of-the-art 'man traps' which would have done James Bond’s 'M' proud.

The data centre has been designed as a primary and secondary ICT facility and acts as a disaster recovery site, internet data centre and carrier interconnect exchange for its high-profile tenants. The biggest of the firms using Polaris is Suncorp, while telecommunications giant NEC has already taken up floor space and plans to use Polaris as a reserve site in case earthquakes should strike Japan.

Strategic Directions' Mike Andrea, who also designed the Treasury Data Centre in Canberra, said today that anyone attempting to enter the Polaris Center after the lockdown would need to breach no less than five levels of security before he could penetrate a building already being rated as one of Australia's most secure.

On the ground floor, the Polaris Centre stores 1.5 million litres of recycled water for cooling plants and enough chemically neutral inert gas to use for fires in the three data centre floors upstairs. Polaris also has two back-up power units in case the 22.5 megawatt on-site power plant malfunctions.