FACILITIES power + cooling
The second limitation concerns the ownership of the building which is leased and not owned by the PCT. The PCT wanted to be sure that any data centre infrastructure equipment in which it invested would be portable and re-usable at another site should circumstances change and a move to a new location be required.
Tender responses to NHS Airedale, Bradford and Leeds
“Given our open brief,” said Martin Powis, Head of IT & Telecoms Infrastructure at NHS Airedale, Bradford and Leeds, “it was interesting how many of the designs put forward were based around APC by Schneider Electric’s InfraStruxure architecture for on-demand data centres.
Paul Arnett, who runs the PCT’s Server Team, including mail services and the Virtualisation Farm, said: “We liked the way that all the various data centre components from PDU, UPS and cabinets to cooling and security are all designed to work together and integrated. Whether the equipment is badged APC or NetBotz, we have the possibility to view all our data centre systems in a ‘single pane of glass’ using the company’s StruxureWare Central software. What was slightly more difficult was selecting from the various proposals with all of the hot aisle containment, in-row cooling and room cooling options on offer.” However, the design proposal made by Advanced Power Technology (APT), an Elite Partner to Schneider Electric, was deemed by the PCT to be the most appropriate solution. The successful design makes use of Schneider Electric’s recently introduced APC InRow OA overhead cooling units to enable a high density data centre with a contained hot aisle. A major benefit of the over-aisle cooling design is that the space constraint is mitigated because the overhead cooling units take up absolutely no room on the data centre floor.
The new data centre includes 8 equipment racks protected by an 80kW APC Symmetra UPS (64kW N+1), with the InRow OA cooling units suspended over the contained hot aisle and providing up to 8kW/ rack cooling capacity. Both the cooling and power protection is scalable and the room could accommodate a further two equipment cabinets if required (cabling and pipe work is pre-installed to enable the space to be utilised at a later date).
The new NHS Airedale, Bradford and Leeds Data Centre
“The new data centre provides us with almost twice the physical space for servers that we had in the old - which had the same amount of floor space. But the real benefit of our new data centre is that
we now have ten times the data centre processing power we had before,” said Martin Powis. The over-aisle cooling means that none of the valuable white space in the data centre is taken up with cooling equipment – providing more physical room for servers. Additionally, since the hot aisle is contained, the data centre can run higher power density and higher server temperatures more predictably. In addition to a better managed and more productive environment, this will also enable lower operating costs as the physical infrastructure is run nearer to optimum efficiency.
APC by Schneider Electric’s Infrastruxure provides a modular approach to data centre deployment. Although the new data centre already provides more capacity than the old, it still has room for more equipment cabinets to meet growth needs. When the time comes, the UPS can be upgraded with additional power and battery modules, and the cooling with additional units for which the pipework is already in place. In the meantime, NHS Airedale, Bradford and Leeds is able to conserve its capital budget as well as gain opex benefits from having the IT load requirement and infrastructure supply closely matched to one another. Once appointed by the PCT, APC were able to meet all of the installation and commissioning deadlines set, even accommodating amendments to the design as the project progressed and evolved.
Conclusion Martin Powis said: “GPs are not compelled to use the PCT’s data centres to provide IT services – the practices are private entities and as such, they have the right of any customer to put their business where they choose. It’s up to us, as the service provider to ensure that we are the first choice. The new data centre should go a long way to helping us maintain our customers’ trust and business.”
The successful design makes use of Schneider Electric’s recently introduced APC InRow OA overhead cooling units to enable a high density data centre with a contained hot aisle. A major benefit of the over-aisle cooling design is that the space constraint is mitigated because the overhead cooling units take up absolutely no room on the data centre floor
May 2012 I
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