Schneider Electric designs DataXion the most energy efficient and sustainable data center in North Africa

Schneider Electric,  the leader in the digital transformation of energy management and automation, has contributed technology and engineering solutions and expertise to design DataXion’s data center - now the most energy efficient and sustainable data center in the North Africa region. The Tunisia-based data centeris the largest colocation facility in North Africa and caters to the financial, retail, internet service providers, and technology firms. The data center, first opened in 2016, has reduced its energy needs by 35%, increased its asset availability by 20%, and lowered operational costs by 20% over the past four years.

Energy efficient data center provides 99.9% uptime in extreme climate

Created by Unipack in 2013, a subsidiary of Tunisia’s Poulina Groupe Holding, DataXion was inaugurated in 2016 to meet the needs of companies throughout North Africa. The facility was designed in accordance with tier 3+ international standards, and includes redundant and dual-powered servers, storage and connectivity. DataXion uses multiple, active and independent sources of power and cooling resources for the site.

Given the region’s climate – in which temperatures often reach 34 degrees Celsius in summer – the site’s greatest challenge was how to reduce energy consumption whilst maintaining the highest levels of availability and security. Schneider Electric’s team designed and implemented an end-to-end data center that would fully automate and digitize the facility’s equipment, ensuring 99.9% availability for customers, whilst monitoring and optimizing the center’s energy usage and cooling.

“DataXion has been designed to the highest energy efficiency standards,” said Lassaad Belhiba, Plant Director, DataXion. “By making the site as efficient as possible and by optimizing the site’s electrical consumption for the equipment and the cooling, we’re able to lower energy costs whilst offering premium hosting services to our customers. The site is the most energy efficient and greenest data center in the region, and that’s thanks to Schneider Electric.”

Schneider Electric EcoStruxure Software & Services ensure reliability and efficiency in data center operations

The site was designed and commissioned by Schneider Electric, and the equipment was supplied and installed by Schneider Electric’s team in the region. The site uses EcoStruxure™ IT Expert, which allows the operations team to monitor, manage and optimize energy use across the site’s servers, cooling and electrical equipment. All preventive, curative and predictive maintenance operations are carried out by Schneider Electric’s service and digital teams.

“This site isn’t only state-of-the art when it comes to the data hosting services it offers, but it’s also a regional leader in terms of energy efficiency,” said Mouna Essa-Egh, Vice President Secure Power Francophone Africa & French Islands, Schneider Electric. “We’ve worked together with DataXion to optimize how energy is used across the site, to reduce inefficiencies and costs, whilst ensuring that the quality of service that the data center offers is of the highest possible standard. DataXion has demonstrated that the region can host green, sustainable data centers that offer companies with reliable, secure data hosting. We’ve been proud to support their vision, and make this data center not only viable, but the provider of choice for companies in North Africa.”