How Vertiv Helped NFrance Cut Data Centre Cooling Power

Vertiv has overhauled the thermal management systems at a sovereign data centre operated by French cloud and colocation provider NFrance. 

The infrastructure project delivered an approximate 20% reduction in power consumption and entirely eliminated water usage associated with cooling operations. 

This upgrade brings the facility’s cooling-related water usage effectiveness (WUE) to zero. The deployment was completed while the site remained live, ensuring continuous service for active client workloads.

Upgrading legacy cooling infrastructure

NFrance has provided cloud hosting and managed services for almost three decades, focusing heavily on data sovereignty and secure availability. As client cloud usage increased and hosted workloads became increasingly dense, the operator identified a need to modernise its thermal output. 

Vertiv engineers collaborated with the French provider to design an integrated thermal chain architecture capable of precise temperature control and improved resource efficiency.

The resulting design uses a Vertiv Liebert PDX direct expansion system – hardware that features variable-speed scroll compressors. These compressors dynamically modulate cooling output between 25% and 100% depending on real-time heat load variations across the server racks.

Targeting efficiency and system redundancy

Heat dissipation across the facility is handled by a Liebert HPA-HCR condenser equipped with electronically commutated fans. This configuration allows the data centre to reject heat without consuming any water while maintaining a low acoustic impact. 

The physical units are managed by an intelligent iCOM controller. This management software uses a teamwork mode to coordinate performance across the entire data floor.

To protect against potential hardware faults, the architecture includes a dual refrigeration circuit with independent condensers built to an N+1 redundancy standard. If a circuit experiences a loss of power or mechanical failure, the system retains up to 50% of its cooling capacity and initiates an automatic restart in under 40 seconds.

Securing long-term business continuity

The initial deployment was supported by Vertiv project management teams, and NFrance holds a preferred warranty contract to guarantee continuous technical support and on-site intervention assistance. This agreement ensures the new thermal architecture aligns with the operator's long-term business continuity plans.

“The performance of our hosting services depends on the stability of our infrastructure,” says Julien Dal, Manager of Data Centre and Infrastructures at NFrance.

“By choosing Vertiv cooling solutions, we have not only secured 99.99% availability for our servers, but also significantly reduced our PUE. Since installation, we have observed absolute thermal precision, even during peak loads. 

“Less energy consumption, more computing power: a winning choice for our profitability and for the planet. 

“Furthermore, Vertiv supported NFrance throughout the project with great professionalism, standing out through the technical quality of the qualification, the proximity of commercial and technical teams, and rigorous follow-up during implementation” 

Roberto Sanchez, Enterprise Sales Director for France at Vertiv adds: 

“Our collaboration with NFrance demonstrates how our comprehensive approach, combining cutting-edge technology solutions, consulting expertise and local services, delivers concrete, measurable results in operational performance and energy efficiency.

“Beyond technical performance, it is our ability to support our clients at every stage, from initial sizing to preventive maintenance, that makes the difference.”