FEATURE UPS & STANDBY POWER
How micro data centres are facilitating the Internet of Things
Comment by Alex Emms, operations director for Kohler Uninterruptible Power
A
traditional IT model typically comprised offices full of people
generating data – and those same offices accessing the results yielded from processing that data. In such circumstances, having a co-located, large-scale data centre to provide the necessary IT resource made perfect sense. Services such as security, environmental control and clean, uninterrupted electrical supply could be rationalised. The data centre represented a single entity to be managed, yet all its equipment, including its environmental conditioning and UPS systems, could be scaled to meet the high-volume demands of its office clients.
IMPACT OF THE INTERNET OF THINGS ON DATA CENTRES However, the advent and growth of what’s loosely called the Internet of Things (IoT) is profoundly changing this model. Data generating devices, whether they’re wearable objects, mobile phones or laptops, or remotely-located items from vending machines to drones, traffic sensors and telemetry systems, are spread across a wide geographical area rather than being concentrated within a single office, or offices. These are often called edge devices because of their position within the IoT network. And transmitting data over great distances from their remote locations to a large, centralised data centre doesn’t make technical or economic sense. The major reason for this relates to the
continuing rapid proliferation of IoT- connected devices; a June 2018 forecast from Juniper Research estimates that the total number of IoT sensors and actuators will exceed 50 billion by 2022. The sharply increasing volume of data being created by this will tax networks to the limit; the implications for network availability are a serious concern for any of the devices’ operators. An alternative, and better, approach is to split and distribute the necessary IT resource, providing it as much smaller, so-called micro data centres located close to the edge devices in their various
24 MARCH 2019 | ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING
remote locations. This brings other key advantages, particularly improved latency; by eliminating the data’s long, two-way network journey, local users and devices will see a faster, more reliable response to their input. Data security also becomes easier to manage. Additionally, smaller data centres can be more flexible and mobile - an important benefit in an environment where IT demand can change rapidly. However, these data centres, while
reduced in size, cannot forego any of their larger counterparts’ performance. High availability remains critical, as does good energy efficiency. Given their dynamic environment, scalability is also essential. It follows that these data centres will require UPSs that are scaled-down, yet also offering the same availability, energy efficiency, scalability, communications capability and serviceability as their large scale equivalents.
UPS CHOICES FOR DATA CENTRES Typically, suppliers that offer large scale UPSs - capable of delivering solutions of up to 5MW - may also provide various smaller UPS models, covering both single-phase and three-phase. Together, these provide a choice of performance, specifications and power ratings suitable for many diverse micro data centre designs. For a more modular solution, compact
tower configurations are available. They can be populated with multiple UPS boards, and support N+1 redundancy. There are also 19in rack-mounted options available through several suppliers. Either configuration can be scaled, incrementally and cost effectively, simply by adding UPS boards as the critical load increases. There are also compact, reliable systems for micro data centres requiring a single phase supply of higher power. These types of UPS systems can offer single or three-phase input from single or dual power sources, with capacities of up to 20kVA capacity; with the option to parallel multiple units to provide up to 80kVA, or 60kVA with N+1 redundancy. Other options to consider are in your
selection process should include tools such as built-in humidity and temperature sensors, and network
connectivity, which allows the UPS’s health to be monitored in real time, and alarms to be detected immediately. Some micro data centres, especially of
larger capacity, will require a three phase UPS output. This can be delivered by any number of systems offering power ratings up to 50kVA per unit, and various cabinet sizes to accommodate different choices of battery capacity. Up to 20 units can often be paralleled, either to increase capacity or to add redundancy for minimising downtime. Extended battery autonomy can be provided by adding stylistically matched battery cabinets. This type of UPS’s transformerless design, together with Energy Saving Inverter Switching (ESIS), technology, enable efficiencies of up to 95.5 per cent to be realised by some suppliers; a level that drastically reduces the UPS’s total cost of ownership. Today, even higher capacity UPSs can operate inside the confined space available within micro data centres.
IOT GROWTH PROJECTIONS An article published in IoT Sources in December 2017 highlights the large number of IoT growth projections now available. While many will be wrong, there is an underlying trend of continued growth and the IoT is gaining momentum, the article says, in spite of the obstacles to implementation that still exist. This is a key driver of growth for micro data centres, but there are others, too. For example, Maurice Zetena IIl, VP of data centre technology and network solutions at Leviton, points out that they are not just an option for remote environments; they can also fulfil roles within mega data centres, acting as data collection points, for example. As micro data centres for these
different applications can vary considerably in size, it’s important that their designers can access an equally varied range of UPSs, all with the same performance - albeit scaled-down – of their traditional data centre counterparts. This article has endeavoured to show some possibilities that currently exist.
Kohler Uninterruptible Power
kohlerups.sg
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