HVAC
INCREASED ENERGY CONSUMPTION? COOL IT!
Growing demands on Data Centres are pushing them to become even more fast-paced, critical and consume all the more energy. What if there was a way to improve reliability and energy consumption? Andy Donnell, Managing Director at Westway Services discusses.
Working in a Data Centre is to be in a fast paced environment; it is about multi-tasking your multi-tasking. Data Centres are both critical and unseen but are part of our future. They make services such as the cloud and Google possible, although they rarely attract the same sort of media attention.
Because they are so fast moving and critical, Data Centres are an incredibly rewarding, as well as challenging, environment to work in. The demands on these services are increasing and Westway have been looking at ways to improve reliability and efficiency for its Data Centre customers. The air conditioning in a data centre is in total control and critical for cooling so there’s no room for error.
As well as needing to operate at top levels often 24/7, Data Centres consume vast amounts of energy. Westway have taken these two challenging components and have
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been developing a piece of software (Uptim(E) = Risk x Frequency) that can improve the efficiency of both. Uptim(E) monitors equipment energy usage and uses this information to optimise both energy consumption and plant maintenance.
“AIR CONDITIONING IN A DATA CENTRE IS CRITICAL.”
The software looks at uptime availability of plant and its energy consumption in conjunction with the risk of failure and the frequency of maintenance. By energy profiling we can tell when equipment is likely to break down or need additional maintenance before it falls over. The software monitors and analyses energy usage, with parameters programmed in to alert us if a plant is using more than it ought to considering its make, model, or manufacturer notes.
In a Data Centre environment where a key challenge is making sure the service is continuous and uninterrupted this provides an additional layer of back up. If we can tell when a piece of equipment is likely to fall over we can take proactive action to make sure it doesn’t – rather than having to work reactively when the clock is ticking.
The software will work on the principle that when equipment is about to fail it often consumes more energy. If you think about your car at home: if you don’t have it serviced regularly and parts start to fail, it often starts to use more fuel; it is the same principle with this equipment. If it has not been serviced or there is something within that unit that is ‘out of kilter’ then we can see from energy analysis that it is spiking more on energy usage. Using this software we can see this happening, investigate and put it right.
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