Availability is today's key word for commercial data centres and distributed control systems (DCS) for industrial processes and manufacturing applications. As the two most critical factors to achieve high availability are electrical power and cooling, new approaches are now being adopted in the design and construction of data centres and DCS installations.
"Power is at the top of the list for data centre designers in their quest to achieve availabilities of 99.995% and higher," says Neill Schreiber, managing director of uninterruptible power supply (UPS) specialist Square One Power Solutions. "The effective cooling of smaller, thinner and more powerful servers that generate considerable heat is a close second in the priority scale."
Schreiber adds that the well-established trend to process more data more quickly will continue and because businesses have become so reliant on IT systems, downtime at data centres not only becomes more expensive, but if it does occur, its cumulative effect on a business can be disastrous.
"Data centres have little option but to continue in their quest to attain the highest possible uptime, a goal that carries considerable costs. The challenge to the power industry has been to develop solutions that increase data centre availability without prohibitive costs - there must be a return on investment, offsetting costs against the profits that result from higher system availability."
Schreiber says a new "InfraStruXure" concept devised by leading international uninterruptible power supply (UPS) manufacturer APC is now being marketed and applied by APC's South African Hi Power Partner Square One Power Solutions, the UPS specialist in the JSE-listed Square One Solutions Group.
"This Network-Critical Physical Infrastructure (NCPI) is the foundation on which IT systems are based and comprises power, power distribution, racks, cable distribution, integrated services, cooling, cooling distribution, cabling and management tools - all wrapped up and offered as a total solution with a single line of responsibility."
Schreiber adds that commerce and industry generally now adopts a "zero tolerance" approach to downtime. This, and the fact that most businesses in the modern environment are highly flexible and in a state of almost constant change, drives new IT infrastructure requirements that must be specified, designed and deployed quickly, in weeks rather than months.
"The strength of the InfraStruXure concept is its modularity and flexibility. Traditional data centre infrastructures designed and built on expected future loads are costly and if the loads are not quickly realised, expensive excess capacity is simply wasted. With InfraStruXure, the platform is scalable and can be built up on a pay-as-it-grows basis."
The redundant design of the UPS InfraStruXure system eliminates single points of failure and as it is factory pre-tested, downtime is reduced. The modules are hot-swappable and are simply pulled-out and plugged-in to significantly reduce system recovery time. The logical, modular design enables proactive management to identify potential problems before they occur. Locking enclosures also provide a more secure environment.
"The speed of system design and implementation is achieved by Web-based configuration tools that simplify the design process, by rack-based standardised modules that allow rapid installation and by integrated pre-engineering which eliminates any need for on-site system testing," says Schreiber.
"Such data centres can be easily and quickly re-located elsewhere, thanks to rack-based modularjty, scalable design and the fact that the power distribution system accommodates all receptacle types and the vendor-neutral enclosures guarantee compatibility with all major IT vendors."
For many companies and organisations, having to deal with only one vendor is a major bonus. No matter what size an organisation is, it can realise the benefits of a single vendor with InfraStruXure. Typical InfraStruXure configurations range from wiring closets (1-3 racks), computer rooms (1-5 racks), small data centres (5-20 racks), medium data centres (20-100 racks) and large data centres (more than 100 racks).
"A major benefit of the concept is the integrated air conditioning," says Schreiber. "The design includes a rack air removal unit that extracts hot air from the rear of the racks and transports it up into the ceiling, from where it returns to the air conditioning system. A rack air distribution unit draws cool air generated by the air conditioner unit from the floor and distributes it through the racks.
"A high density air conditioning system is also available for large installations and various configurations, including hot-aisle and cold-aisle, can be adopted to best suit the cooling requirements of each individual data centre. The air conditioning systems, as they are critical to the data centre operation, are also supported by UPS modules."
The InfraStruXure concept also incorporates management modules for the data centre infrastructure, for the UPS network and for the environment, the latter monitoring temperature, humidity, shock and vibration and access to the centre via door monitors.
On the power side, the UPS offerings are all scalable and vary in rack size from 12kW up to One megawatt in size (the smaller UPS units can be installed in the server room with the larger UPS units installed in separate rooms adjacent to the server room).
"Modules and racks can be added as required to meet the growth and expansion requirements of each customer," says Schreiber. Every system is put together with cables already cut to the correct lengths required for the installation site. The complete system is delivered already made up and once it is on site it is merely a matter of plugging the unit in and connecting the cables."
A major motivation behind the development of "InfraStruXure" systems was risk management. The systems can be configured to support any make or configuration of computer, which Schreiber says, all adds up to considerable reduction of risk for the customer's IT department.
"The concept is designed to maximise flexibility, scalability and system security while minimising the risks associated with data centre or critical equipment failure. As part of the wider Square One Group we have the expertise available in-house to design and implement InfraStruXure solutions."
Schreiber says the broad concept can be applied just as easily to a 1 000-server data centre as it can to a 10-server centre.
"We believe this is the way forward - offering the market an open, non-proprietary system that is modular, completely upgradeable and expandable with built-in redundancy, minimises risk and is highly cost-effective."
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Square One Power Solutions is a national UPS company, an APC High Power Partner and a member of the JSE-listed Square One Solutions Group. It provides power solutions for the SOHO, PCA and SME network environment, telecommunications, medical, security, lighting and general industry as well as major corporations and government. The Square One Solutions Group focuses on providing IT-based business enabling solutions. The company has a national footprint and more than 18 years of experience of the South African market. Square One offers value-based solutions centred around biometric authentication; integrated wireless and mobile applications; enterprise storage and backup/recovery; enterprise power; coding and marking; and enterprise LAN, WAN and infrastructure for the corporate, SME and government markets. The company also distributes document solutions, colour input and output devices and provides 24x7 national support and service.
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