Modular Data Center Enables Large Transportation Company to Scale
Swift Transportation, the largest common carrier in the United States, faced a critical challenge as its data center struggled with infrastructure issues that led to unplanned outages and equipment failures. These failures weakened senior management’s confidence in the company’s technology and IT staff and jeopardized plans for essential technology upgrades.
These disruptions in the data center also threatened consumers and businesses beyond Swift Transportation. Trucks transport more than 71% of goods in the U.S., valued at $10.4 trillion of the $14.5 trillion of the value of all goods shipped. Disruption to operations and delays in shipping could have a ripple effect on the economy due to the impact on supply chains and the availability of raw materials for manufacturers and finished goods for consumers.
The problem
Many of these troubles were introduced as part of previous expansion efforts, which were undertaken without a strategic plan. The major issue was a physical layout that caused poor cooling and threatened the ability to cool the equipment—unstable flooring, low ceilings, and poor rack layout.
To overcome these challenges, the company needed to strategically update its data center and find a solution that would be scalable to continue to support operations as its business and the technology landscape evolve.
The solution
Swift Transportation needed an updated data center to address its current needs and be a foundation for future growth. The answer was a scalable, modular data center that would address the challenges they currently faced while ensuring the facility could handle added capacity in the future. They worked with DSI to build a new modular data center with important redundancies to mitigate technology failures.
A modular data center provides owners and operators with the ability to rapidly deploy a customized solution, build a scalable data center to increase capacity as needed, allow for higher density configurations, and easily build in redundancies for critical systems, and do so cost-efficiently.
Key features of this solution:
- New floors to provide a safe, solid foundation for the equipment.
- New ceiling to improve air circulation and prevent hot spots.
- Redundant A/B PDUs to ensure reliable power distribution.
- Hot aisle containment to improve cooling capabilities and efficiencies.
- Redundant in-row cooling to prevent cooling system failures.
- Fire and life safety improvements to prioritize safety.
- Strategic exterior placement of generator and chiller cooling systems to ensure optimal functionality.
These changes addressed the existing challenges that Swift Transportation’s data center faced and created a strategic plan to enhance reliability and scalability, and build an adaptable, trusted technology infrastructure to support future growth. Learn more about how DSI can help you overcome current challenges and build resilient infrastructure to take your business into the future.
