Mike's Notes
On Monday, I met with DataGrid NZ to discuss the provision of a future data centre for Pipi. Here are my evolving notes. This will no doubt change with experimentation.
Resources
- https://southlandchamber.co.nz/datagrid-eyeing-2028-opening-of-new-data-centre/
- https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/new-zealands-datagrid-buys-another-six-hectares-for-invercargill-campus/
- https://www.thepress.co.nz/nz-news/360564364/datagrid-seeks-fast-track-approval-submarine-cable-australia
- https://environment.govt.nz/acts-and-regulations/acts/fast-track-approvals-bill/fast-track-projects/datagrid-sustainable-data-centre-park/
- https://subtelforum.com/datagrid-and-chorus-announce-trans-tasman-subsea-cable/
- https://www.datacentermap.com/c/datagrid-new-zealand/
- https://www.capacitymedia.com/article/2ckxc03g3wpct7rg99ce8/appointments/datagrid-new-zealand-names-perrine-dhalluin-as-new-ceo
- https://www.blog.ajabbi.com/2025/05/boxlang-100.html
- https://www.blog.ajabbi.com/2025/04/data-centre-options-for-pipi-9.html
- https://www.ortussolutions.com/products/cloud-servers/ortus-cloud-servers
References
- Reference
Repository
- Home > Ajabbi Research > Library >
- Home > Handbook >
Last Updated
08/04/2025
A three-data-centre model for Pipi
Mike is the inventor and architect of Pipi and the founder of Ajabbi.
Perrine Dhalluin, CEO of DataGrid NZ, recently spoke at a meeting in April in Invercargill, New Zealand, about the new Data Centre to be built nearby in Makarewa. I got to meet her.
I had a further remote meeting on Monday, May 5, 2025, with Perrine Dhalluin and Pierre-Emmanuel Goiffon, DataGrid's CTO. The discussion was open and broad-ranging. I can work with these people.
Ongoing discussions and in-person meet-ups are planned.
Data Centre Requirements
The top priorities are
- Reliability
- Security
Reliability
This will require extensive power, cooling, compute monitoring, and connectivity redundancy. Also, plan for fires, tornadoes, earthquakes, undersea landslides, perimeter incursion, etc.
Security
This critical infrastructure needs to meet any country's highest government security requirements. There must never be security or privacy breaches.
Data Centres
Because of its unusual architecture, Pipi needs three separate data centres that work together in a chain.
Rendering > Staging > Cloud
- Rendering built enterprise applications
- Staging update, localise and deploy enterprise applications
- Cloud hosting enterprise applications
Rendering
The rendering farm data centre is like a CNC machine for software; it automatically builds massive SaaS enterprise systems for critical infrastructure to order. The first rendering rack is being constructed and will be operational later this year. Plan for growth over time.
Processes applied include;
- Applying versioned industry schema, eg Snowmed, IATF
- Ontologies
- Laws of physics
- Human language translations
- Digital twins
- Systems that learn by evolutionary algorithms and reproduce
- etc
Digital twins of configuration settings and the path taken for each;
- Enterprise customer
- Industry
- World model
- Common core
- etc
Rittal is the preferred supplier.
Staging
The staging data centre updates, localises and deploys the applications to the customer's cloud hosting environment and sends GitHub, open-source modules, and plug-ins. It needs to be somewhere very secure with excellent connectivity. Plan for growth over time.
Processes include;
- Update servers
- Additional prerendering
- Localisation
- Future AI usage
- Documentation
- etc
DataGrid NZ is the preferred supplier.
Cloud
Cloud hosting of the built enterprise systems for customer use in production.
Initial availability will be;
- AWS
- Azure
- Digital Ocean
- GCP
- IBM
There is no preferred cloud supplier.
No Moats
The applications will not have moats and can use open API connectors to other systems, enabling the customer to choose. For example;
- RDMS
- MSSQL
- Postgresql
- Oracle
- etc
- GIS
- MapInfo
- ESRI
- QGIS
- etc.
- Maths & Science
- Wolfram
- MatLab
- Kepler
- etc.
Platform Requirements
The common platform will be;
- VM
- Open-source BoxLang
- JVM on Open JDK 21+
- OS - Ubuntu Linux and Windows
Ortus is the preferred supplier.
Connectivity
This needs to be confirmed, but my understanding is that the Makarewa data centre will be connected via;
"Hawaiki Nui will connect South-East Asia, Australasia, and North America; the 12 fiber pair, 240Tbps cable will connect Singapore, Sydney, and Los Angeles, as well as New Zealand via Invercargill." - DataCentreDynamics.org
Before the data centre is built, two cables will come ashore at Oreti Beach, near Invercargill.
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