Seznam.cz opens its second data centre, ‘Nagoya’, in Benátky nad Jizerou

Thanks to its continued market success and the attendant growth in capacity required for the processing of data, Seznam.cz has built its second proprietary data centre, called ‘Nagoya’, taking another step towards becoming an entity absolutely independent of external suppliers. The building takes up an area of approximately 1,200 square metres, with Seznam.cz, the number one player of the Czech internet market, acting as the project investor, in cooperation with Systeming.cz, as the chief designer, and, Altron, as the general contractor.

“Seznam.cz is our long-standing partner.  In 2013, we built the Kokura data centre with it, and now we are completing another successful project on which we have worked for the last year.  Nagoya is a technologically advanced solution packed with modern technologies developed by our development centre.  These technologies will make for cost-efficient and environmentally effective operation and will ensure the possibility of the data centre’s future development,” says head of the Technology Division of Altron a.s. Pavel Kvasnička.

The building is outside of the capital, near Exit 27 on Motorway D10 (heading out of Prague), on Průmyslová Street in Benátky nad Jizerou. The cornerstone of the building was laid on 22 February 2022 and, in just over a year, namely on 9 March 2023, pilot operation of the data centre was launched.

The investment in the data centre and the adjoining land amounts to approximately CZK 300 million and, compared to the construction of the first datacentre, Kokura, the cost per unit of installed capacity for IT was cut in half.  Thanks to the large area of the land on which the datacentre is built, another building or a photovoltaic power plant could be built on the property in the future, should it be required. 

Three megawatts and inhouse servers

“Compared to the Kokura data centre, Nagoya will offer up to three MW for IT equipment.  Two halls of the data centre will fit over 200 server racks, each with a capacity of up to 15 kW.  The design was aimed primarily at the placement of the servers that we have been developing and putting together for some time.  Another innovation will be the use of direct freecooling for cooling the servers.  Thanks to the large underground tank, we will use rainwater for cooling in summer.  That means that, overall, to the maximum extent possible, we cool with direct outdoor air channelled via filters and, if necessary, modified to the required humidity in limit situations.  This allows us to fully omit machine cooling,” says Vlastimil Pečínka, Technical Director at Seznam.cz, adding that Seznam.cz thinks economically and ecologically, aiming to achieve a PUE of 1.1.  That means that, with server consumption of 3 MW, the total consumption of the data centre is only about 3.3 MW.  The market standard is still a PUE of 1.3 to 1.5.  At the same time, the Czech internet number one continues to build physical infrastructure by expanding its original Kokura data centre, which will continue throughout 2023, with an expected launch in the spring of 2024.

Nagano ends.  The move to Nagoya starts

Nagoya will fully replace the existing server installation in the Nagano data centre leased from O2 since 2006.  The move starts in mid-March this year and is scheduled to be complete by this May, all during full operation.  In 2023, Seznam.cz will therefore have two in-house datacentres (Kokura and Nagoya) with target capacity of 2×3 MW and one leased centre (Ósaka data centre in Stodůlky, leased from O2).

The name Nagoya was created internally, with the aim of keeping the abbreviation ‘NG’ and to carry on in the tradition of naming our data centres after Japanese cities.  The tradition was started with Kokura in 2015.  The name was chosen with a view to the currently used name Nagano, and also because it contains the story of happiness.