END USER INSIGHT
close to Dublin ’ s city centre , real estate is at a premium . There are continuing demands for more student facilities and consequently the need to make more efficient use of space by support services such as IT . Finally , there is a pervasive need to maintain services as costeffectively as possible and to minimise environmental impact in keeping with a general commitment to sustainability .
As part of a major strategic development of the university ’ s facilities called Future Campus , the main Daedalus data centre was required to free up some outdoor space taken up by a mechanical plant , and make it available for use by another department . The IT Services organisation took this opportunity to revise the data centre cooling architecture to make it more energy and space efficient as well as more resilient and scalable .
“ When the data centre was originally built , we had a large number of HPC clusters and consequently a high rack power density ,” said Cannon . “ At the time , we deployed a chilled water-cooling system as it was the best solution for such a load . However , as the technology of the IT equipment has advanced to provide higher processing capacity per server , the cooling requirement has reduced considerably even though the HPC clusters have greatly increased in computational power .”
One challenge with the chilled water system was that it relied upon a single set of pipes to supply the necessary coolant , which therefore represented a single point of failure . Any issues encountered with the pipework , such as leaks , could therefore threaten the entire data centre with downtime . This could create problems at any time in the calendar , however , if it was to occur at critical moments such as during exams or registration it would have a big impact on the university community . Reputational damage , both internally and externally , would also be significant .
Solution : Migration to Schneider Electric Uniflair InRow DX Cooling Solution resolves reliability , scalability and space constraints
UCD IT Services took the opportunity presented by the Future Campus project to replace the existing chilled waterbased cooling system with a new solution , utilising Schneider Electric ’ s Uniflair InRow Direct Expansion ( DX ) technology , using a refrigerant vapour expansion and compression cycle . The condensing elements have been located on the roof of the data centre , conveniently freeing up significant ground space on the site formerly used for a cooling plant .
Following on from an open tender , UCD selected Total Power Solutions , a Schneider Electric Elite Partner , to deliver the cooling update project . Total Power Solutions had previously carried out several power and cooling infrastructure installations and upgrades on the campus and is considered a trusted supplier to the university . Working
48 www . intelligentdatacentres . com