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Over the lock-down period we have been busy improving our digital proposition for our readers across all our news sites, magazines, reports and digital events.

We have have decided to move all our content from the Mission Critical Power portal to theenergyst.com We have also created a new App and magazine web reader to create an innovative and slick experience for our readers and advertisers.

theenergyst.com receives in excess of 25,000 monthly visitors and as we prepare our paths to net zero pushing further information from operators of critical sites justifies the decision to push our MCP content to a larger audience.

Our new app can be downloaded on Google Play or the App Store by searching for “The Energyst|. All our latest news, our issues and access to our market reports can be accessed by our new app. Readers will be notified when new issues are available.

Alternatively to read the issue via the new web reader online please click here.

The post Mission Critical Power – latest issue appeared first on theenergyst.com.

Fortunately, various techniques are available to optimise UPS operating efficiency under all conditions, as demonstrated in modern, modular UPSs like Kohler Uninterruptible Power’s new PowerWAVE MF1500 DPA. Exceptionally resilient, flexible and scalable to 6MW, the modular new UPS offers best-in-market VFI mode energy efficiency.
When double conversion on-line UPSs first appeared in the seventies, they used transformer-based designs. However, advances in power semiconductor technology have facilitated a general industry move towards transformerless solutions. This has brought several advantages, including some related to efficiency.

Firstly, the topology is inherently more efficient. Even at optimal, near full load conditions, transformer-based designs remain well below 95 percent – and as the load reduces towards 25 percent, efficiency approaches just over 85 percent. By contrast, the PowerWAVE MF1500 DPA can achieve efficiencies up to 97.4% VFI, reducing environmental impact, optimising PUE measures and delivering significant financial savings in energy and cooling costs.

However, the benefits extend further; the considerable size and weight reductions achieved by transformerless designs mean that complete UPS solutions can be implemented as small, rack-mounting modules rather than as large, monolithic units.

This comprises the UPS supporting, say, a 500 kW load; it would use two of its 250 kW modules – or three, to provide N+1 redundancy. Then, if the load increases, incrementing the UPS’s capacity by sliding in another 250 kW module (vertical scaling) is cost-effective, easy, and can be done without even interrupting power to the load. Further capacity can be provided by horizontal scaling, i.e. adding more racks in parallel.
Note that both benefits – redundant capacity and scalability – are achieved with minimal excess capacity, space and cost, due to the modules’ granularity.
By contrast, a monolithic system typically has to be significantly oversized for future-proofing. Additionally, N+1 redundancy must be implemented using two complete systems, so neither can ever be more than 50 percent loaded even in the best case. These factors force the monolithic system to work with low loads, where efficiency drops away sharply.
Designed with a clear goal in mind, the MF1500 DPA is designed to define that reliability does not require excess, and high power can exist alongside efficient use of energy. The new system combines proven Decentralised Parallel Architecture (DPA) technology with the latest advances in components and software. This includes high performance materials for the coils core and its smart mechanical cooling design for booster and inverter sinks, reducing heat loss and extending the component lifetime.

To meet ever-increasing pressure to curb power consumption, UPS users must avail themselves of every technique to improve energy efficiency. Their best option is to choose a UPS that not only benefits from modern, modular transformerless topology, but also maintains high efficiency levels under all load conditions and has high quality energy efficient components.
To give an example of the likely cost saving, in a 1.5 MW installation, over 10 years the 0.7% extra efficiency of the MF1500 DPA versus a competitor at 96.7% can save over £150,000 in electrical and cooling costs.
A consultation with an experienced supplier like Kohler Uninterruptible Power is always recommended, as they can advise on the options and suggest optimum solutions for energy efficiency.

The post Is Data Centre Energy Efficiency Mission Impossible? appeared first on theenergyst.com.

Sudlows have been working with an increasing number of key clients across multiple European countries including Ireland, Germany, France and Belgium. The new Dublin office is therefore a strategic motion to ensure continued support and project delivery to our EU clients post Brexit.

Acting as a satellite office for the Manchester and London Sudlows locations, the new Dublin office will provide a European base for Sudlows to continue to deliver their full suite of professional services across European markets as ‘Sudlows Enterprise Services Europe’.

John Collins, Managing Director at Sudlows comments;
“The new Dublin office is a key addition for Sudlows. We have been working with an increasing number of major clients in Ireland and the rest of Europe over the last three years. The Dublin office joins our UAE and India locations to make the third international Sudlows office, allowing us to offer our professional and technical services across the globe.”

The post Sudlows Open New European Office in Dublin appeared first on theenergyst.com.

Sponsored post

This year, the longest running data centre event in Europe is relocating to one of London’s most outstanding venues. DatacenterDynamics Europe will be held on the 1st & 2nd November 2016 at Old Billingsgate Market on the banks of the River Thames in the heart of the City of London.

Sudlows & Interserve will be located on: Stand 102

“This year’s sees Sudlows, once again, investing in our sponsorship and creating our largest stand to date, to showcase our exciting joint collaboration with Interserve.” Commented Chris Dummett, Commercial Director, Sudlows.

The theme for this year’s event is ‘Building the ZettaStructure’; the collective name they are giving the physical layer of hardware, facilities and networks that extend beyond the walls of the traditional data center environment and that together form the foundation of the digital economy.

For more details visit:  www.sudlows.com  www.interserve.com

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The post Sudlows and Interserve announce joint sponsorship of DatacenterDynamics Europe 2016 appeared first on theenergyst.com.

Sponsored post: Is ‘Green IT’ just another buzz phase within the technology stratosphere? With the industry rapidly evolving, the number of interpretations of the term is increasing, with each growing in complexity.

Simplistic explanations centre on the direct reduction of carbon emissions within a business’s IT and wider operational functions. At the other end of the spectrum ‘Green IT’ delves much deeper into the analyses of how efficiently, sustainably and environmentally technology is developed and delivered.

One particular sector to have come under the ‘Green IT’ spotlight is the data centre industry. With its often enormous power usage (in comparison to other technology biased market sectors), data centre owners/operators are having to manage their power efficiencies very cautiously.

Whilst PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) has long been the industry standard for measuring environmental performance of the data centre, it has recently come under some scrutiny where it is set as the benchmark to asses overall data centre efficiency.

Under the ‘Green IT’ initiatives being steered by multiple governing bodies including the Environment Agency, it is not just PUE that needs to be measured but the overall effectiveness of the reduction of energy consumption for entire infrastructures.

It won’t be surprising to learn that global $multi-billion ICT solutions provider Huawei Technologies Co Ltd has been well ahead of the curve when it comes to developing systems for ‘Green IT’ environments, addressing the more exhaustive ‘Green IT’ criteria.

Huawei has cultivated an entire ‘Green Connected World’ vision, which addresses the challenges of big data, traffic and energy consumption. Huawei evaluates the complete technology landscape, taking into account the proposition of digitalisation, networking, intellectualisation and the integration of information technology and power electronic technology.

Investing over 6% of its $9bn turnover in R&D, Huawei has 70,000 out of its 170,000 engineers working in this field. This directly facilitates the development of improving operational efficiency with simple, efficient and reliable network energy solutions.

The highest levels of effectiveness and efficiency have been built into the natural cycle of the design, development and manufacturer of Huawei’s expansive portfolio of network components, modular data centres, UPS, telecom and IT systems. It is the company’s 30 year heritage and strong engineering ethos that has placed Huawei at the fore of delivering ‘Green IT’ solutions.

Huawei’s account manager for data centre infrastructure James Coughlan commented: “When it comes to solutions for data centres, Huawei has always looked beyond face value efficiency and invested in achieving the overall reduction of energy consumption from initial component development and manufacture through to operational deployment.

“The concept of ‘Green IT’ is not new to us but it would seem that the industry has epitomised it as a somewhat convoluted prerequisite. Huawei’s ‘Green Connected World’ vision was established long before the first rumblings of ‘Green IT’.”

“Huawei hasn’t led the ‘Green IT’ hypothesis by chance, it has just long recognised the importance of energy efficiency, sustainability and the even greater significance of businesses’ needs to reduce their overall carbon footprint.

“In line with Huawei’s commitment towards delivering efficient solutions, Power Control also ensures that customers can fully embrace the ‘Green IT’ initiative by helping them to understand the true total cost of ownership (TCO).

“TCO is an area that has been vastly over looked and subsequently many are running very inefficient operations. When carrying out site surveys we often come across sites where power protection infrastructure equipment is operating at less than 85% overall efficiency, which has a huge financial impact on the overall running of the facility. Initially investing a small premium on efficient systems will reduce TCO and be financially beneficial for the site very early in the operating life of the new equipment.

“Naturally there is reticence to invest in more efficient solutions and schedule the time for replacement of what may have been a stalwart piece of equipment such as a legacy UPS, which is why Power Control has developed its own intelligent investment solutions. This means there is no “upfront” investment for the client and Power Control take full responsibility of the upgrade, minimising any hassle factor of becoming greener. In addition, there are no uncertainties of investing in capital assets with our solution, which frees up capital for other areas in the business.

“If funnelling best practice efficiency and carbon footprint reduction through a buzz phrase helps to inspire the industry to make changes for the better then let’s all embrace the great ‘Green IT’ revolution and become as ‘green’ as can be!”

Huawei

Huawei’s portfolio is expansive and most pertinent to the data centre industry are its Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) systems and all in one design micro data centres. Developed as an intelligent, fully integrated cabinet solution, one of Huawei’s micro data centre combines full redundant UPS, PDU, cooling and monitoring systems. Where another is a single cabinet (42U/24U) data centre solution includes PDU, monitoring system along with rack space for IT and networking equipment and UPS.

It is Huawei’s UPS5000-S series that has taken up most of the headlines recently having made a significant breakthrough in reducing data centre energy consumption. By fine tuning every component and module, Huawei has achieved the highest efficiency level in the industry of up to 97.6% even at 40% load ratio. A reduced footprint of up to 50% is also achieved for the UPS5000-S series thanks to the design of its modules, which have a power density of up to 50kW per 3U – two times higher than mainstream products.

Power Control

For further information about the company, its products or services please visit www.pcl-ups.com, email info@pcl-ups.com or call 0800 136993 

The post ‘Green IT?’ Why wouldn’t you make a data centre operate as efficiently as possible? appeared first on theenergyst.com.

Sponsored post

Already this year, over €2billion (£1.68billion) in new datacentre projects have been announced and a further €2billion is forecast to follow over the next five years.

Projects include:

*             €200m – New DataCentre in Cork – JDC Group

*             €150m Expansion into New DataCentre in Dublin – Google

*             €900m Expansion of Dublin DataCentre Campus – Microsoft

*             160hectare New DataCentre & IT Campus site in Killala, Co. Mayo

*             €1billion, New DataCentre in Galway – Apple

*             €800m New DataCentre in Co. Meath – Facebook

*             New DataCentre in Dublin – EdgeConnex

*             The Gemini Project – Dublin

*             New large DataCentre planned in Limerick – Tiernan Properties

This scale of investment activity is driving growth in the datacentre market and creating business opportunities for investors, operators, suppliers and service providers.

Why?

Brexit, Safe Harbor 2, Tax Rates, People, are all key factors. As is Ireland’s vastly improved connectivity both nationally and internationally – with new faster ‘pipes’ giving direct connections to the USA, Paris and the Netherlands without going via London.

Ireland is uniquely positioned to capitalise on the need for more data storage and hosting which will be driven by in no small way by; IOT (Internet of Things), M2M (Machine to Machine) communications, driverless cars, new 5G services, and the continued growth of streamed video.

All this is driving growth and business opportunities.

Why you should attend DataCentres Ireland

DataCentres Ireland Conference & Exhibition is the annual event at which all those responsible for, and involved in driving the growing Irish datacentres industry come together to discuss the latest in developments and source the products services and solutions that can assist them in achieving their goals.

The theme of DataCentres Ireland 2016 is Infrastructure * Services * Solutions.

Featuring over 60 speakers and panellists, 70 exhibitors and over 1000 attendees, Datacentres Ireland will address both the practical and strategic issues affecting the datacentres and the Irish market.

This is your chance to hear, first-hand about:

International market trends affecting datacentres

What this means for Ireland

The opportunities Ireland offers investors, operators and suppliers

What are the new technologies and approaches that are changing datacentre operations

Datacentres Ireland is your chance to meet the Irish datacentres market in just two days.

Registration is free

So all you have to do is invest the time and benefit from the experience

Register at www.datacentres-ireland.com

To exhibit call the DataCentre Team on +44(0) 1 892 518877 or Email datacentres@stepex.com

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The post Knowledge is power, don’t hand it to others, warn Ireland datacentre expo organisers appeared first on theenergyst.com.

Sponsored:

Over €2billion (£1.68billion) of investment in new datacentres or expansions to existing datacentres in Ireland has been announced this year already. These include:

*             €200m – New DataCentre in Limerick – Tiernan Properties

*             €150m – New DataCentre in Cork – JDC Group

*             €150m Expansion into New DataCentre in Dublin – Google

*             €900m Expansion of Dublin DataCentre Campus – Microsoft

*             160hectare New DataCentre & IT Campus site in Killala, Co. Mayo

*             €1billion, New DataCentre in Galway – Apple

*             €800m New DataCentre in Co. Meath – Facebook

*             New DataCentre in Dublin – EdgeConnex

But this is not the end, as the Irish Wind Energy Association is forecasting a further €2billion of datacentres, new builds and expansions to existing sites to be announced in the next 5 years.

Whilst Ireland is known for the large hyper-scale data centres, the market is changing as more independent carrier neutral datacentres are being built, and with the demand for edge-centres continuing to grow this will only increase.

Ireland is getting connected – There is also a change happening in Ireland, the countries connectivity locally and internationally is becoming faster with new ‘pipes’ giving new direct connections to the USA, Paris and the Netherlands without going via London.

Cork is seeing a number of these ‘pipes’ hitting shore and is set to enjoy number of new developments over the coming years.

Internally (Irish) connectivity has also vastly improved which means that the opportunities for DC operators to find locations away from Dublin and Cork also exist.

Ireland is uniquely positioned to capitalise on the need for more Data storage and hosting which will be driven by in no small way by; IOT (Internet of Things), M2M (Machine to Machine) communications, Driverless cars, new 5G services, and the continued growth of streamed video.

Now in its fifth year, DataCentres Ireland takes place on the 8 – 9 November at the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) Dublin and is the country’s largest and best attended Conference & Exhibition for the island of Ireland.

This multi-streamed conference and exhibition benefits from the active involvement of industry organisations such as: Data Centre Alliance, The Green Grid and Host In Ireland.

Featuring over 50 leading national and international speakers, the conference will address both the ‘Operational’ and ‘Strategic’ issues effecting the hosting of and infrastructure needed.

The ‘Operational’ session will address practical issues of how to design, build and operate effective and resilient datacentres, server and comms rooms. Whether that be power, cooling legacy datacentres and new technologies, through to efficiencies that can be gained by monitoring ‘what you run on the servers’ and how developments such as Blockchain may effect industry processes and hence the datacentres and digital infrastructure.

The ‘Strategy’ sessions will look at the factors driving the Irish market, Brexit, Safeharbor2, legislation and issues related to Governance and Tax…. And what this may mean for investors, datacentre operators, and those seeking to host their digital asset in Ireland country.

As part of the Strategy Session “Host In Ireland” is sponsoring a dedicated Conference stream entitled “For Ireland The Data is the “Why”, The Centre is the “How” and will include Host In Ireland Executive and Advisory Council members along with selected global industry leaders.

With keynotes and panels, discussing issues linked to • Data Sovereignty- Protection, Compliance • Financing of Data/Hosting Infrastructure Developments • Irish Regional Development • Global Megatrends – What his may mean for Ireland •Creation, Retention and Attraction of Talent.

There’s a lot going on in Ireland… So invest the time and network with the market.

Registration is FREE via www.datacentres-ireland.com

To exhibit call the DataCentre Team on +44(0) 1 892 518877 or Email datacentres@stepex.com

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The post Why you should attend Data Centres Ireland conference and expo appeared first on theenergyst.com.

Restricted to 2,000 invited guests who represent the top decision makers from companies that run data center-scale infrastructure – a scale that even if completely outsourced to the cloud still requires highly evolved IT operations – the conference sets out to explore the ‘borderlands’ between physical infrastructure and the Software-Defined Data Center.

The event format has been updated to include morning plenaries featuring some of the biggest names in the industry, followed by pre-lunch seminars, whilst the afternoon gives way to an entirely new format of ‘big discussions’ that will tap the minds of the leaders within the sector.

DCD Converged takes place at Old Billingsgate Market, London, from 1-2 November. Reserve your place at: https://www.dcdconverged.com/conferences/zettastructure

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The post Building the ZettaStructure: Why you should attend DataCenterDynamics Converged conference appeared first on theenergyst.com.

Sudlows design engineer Anthony Unsworth outlines the threat to power continuity – and how to mitigate against them.

The demand for mission critical systems is continuously increasing. The IT equipment storing this data is extremely sensitive and will not tolerate loss of power for more than a few milliseconds. It is also at risk from power anomalies such as over-voltages, transients, sags and spikes arising from the power grid or within the facility itself. Therefore, it is vital that appropriate safeguards are put in place to ensure that a reliable power supply free from disturbance is maintained.

To achieve this, experienced engineering along with significant capital investment is required for generators, UPS systems, redundant switchgear and diverse distribution paths. Certainly the most catastrophic event in a data centre scenario would be a sustained power outage and the implementation of generators will protect against this. To maximise resilience however, various layers of protection must be applied closer to individual components of the facility which will provide protection against unplanned events upstream of the source.

Disruptions and risks

Power disruptions are caused by a host of reasons and can hit a business unexpectedly. Natural events beyond our control are often the cause with lightning strikes, earthquakes, flooding and storms all claiming responsibility for blackouts. In addition to natural disasters, humans are also responsible with construction accidents, equipment failure, sabotage and even terrorism posing a threat. Regardless of what causes a power outage, businesses must be prepared and have a power protection strategy in place should such an event occur.

The impacts of power disruption are felt by all and the longer the downtime, the more costly it is to a business. Loss in sales, decline in productivity, disgruntled customers, and claims for compensation all paint a scary picture to an institution facing disturbances to their power. Data centres storing vast amounts of sensitive information are the immediate thoughts which spring to mind but industrial plants where large machines are out of operation are equally at risk.

In addition to the obvious financial implications, people’s safety can be put at risk and fire alarms, lighting and water treatment also warrant protection. Security systems are another important consideration and CCTV, intruder alarms and access control are only as available as the power serving it.

Power anomalies

Other than a complete loss of power, there are a number of power issues that will disrupt the flow of good quality power to your mission-critical equipment and even slight sags or spikes in voltage can have significant consequences.

A common power issue is a sag which is a short term drop in voltage which starves equipment of it’s required voltage and can disrupt data by causing systems to reboot. We can often determine the effects of a sag when we see lights momentarily dim or flicker. The opposite effect is a short term over-voltage condition and is known as a spike.

An undervoltage (also known as a brownout) or an overvoltage (surge) are similar to sags and spikes but occur for extended periods. Brownouts often happen during summer months when air conditioning units are ramped up.

Harmonic distortion is the distortion of a normal power wave and is caused as a result of non-linear loads. This can cause increased heating in equipment and conductors of power systems.

As power quality can vary greatly between different providers, it is essential to invest in the necessary equipment such as power conditioners, harmonic filters and surge suppressors to remove or minimise these power anomalies. The most basic protection designed to tackle this is a surge suppressor which protects equipment from spikes and surges. Surge suppressors are inexpensive and a worthwhile investment to prevent damage to expensive electrical equipment.

The best protection is to install a centralised uninterruptible power system (UPS) complete with battery back-up capability. The UPS provides continuous power in the event of a power failure, maintaining the critical load while a signal is sent to start the generator which can then assume the load. In addition to this crucial function, the UPS conditions the power supply and provides complete protection against anomalies such as spikes and sags which can harm the sensitive data equipment.

Power protection strategies

A power protection strategy and a risk analysis is essential and should be included in your disaster recovery plan to ensure that the threats to your facility are mitigated. Try to understand what impact power disruptions would have on your business and identify the potential single points of failure in the infrastructure of your data centre. Audits and assessments of existing facilities are invaluable to highlight vulnerable areas followed by a comprehensive design to increase resilience.

Sizing the critical power system is also important and equipment must be rated in accordance with the anticipated load. Consideration must also be given to future expansion and spare capacity should be factored into the design for the addition of modular parallel UPS units, cooling systems and additional switchgear to facilitate the increased load.

Fault tolerance can also be improved by building redundancy into the power system by means of N+1 or 2N UPS units. This way, if a single piece of equipment fails or needs to be isolated for maintenance, the remaining units can still support the connected load. The scale of redundancy will be determined by weighing the capital costs against the impact level should an event occur. N+1 redundancy is a viable choice for those seeking to achieve scalability whilst keeping costs down.

Data Centres are dynamic environments and assessing the critical power system is crucial if you want to maintain your level of protection. Unfortunately, this is where many businesses fall victim to decreased resilience and downtime. Current protection must be reviewed following any expansion or changes to the data centre architecture to ensure that it is still fit for purpose.

Smooth operations are also aided by good processes and complete updated documentation. Staff should be suitably trained to identify potential problems and understand what steps to take in the event of an emergency. Lastly, regular maintenance is crucial to ensure that a data centre is functioning correctly. As well as individual testing and commissioning, integrated system testing (IST) should be undertaken to make sure that all the facility components work together correctly.

Our increased dependence on electricity and networks has led to a dramatic increase in the mission-critical operations managed in our data centres. A good power protection strategy is important to understand the threats to your business operations and ultimately a properly designed power protection system is vital to safeguard them.

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The post How to reduce loss of power risks appeared first on theenergyst.com.

The company says the new website with a streamlined and user-friendly interface, showcases its core services. Sudlows says it will be a key source of all  company information, with live social media feeds, opinion articles and regularly updated job postings.

Due to the continuing growth within the data centre industry, and the critical nature of cooling and power technology, the firm is also expanding its technical services range.

The new division, Critical Infrastructures, will continue to deliver award-winning data centres, but can now also provide a much broader offering to all clients, with dedicated Critical power and Cooling subdivisions for all operational functions, says the firm.

“The new website brilliantly captures our enhanced technical service offering to all clients and partners and opens a new digital platform in communicating directly with our core audience,” said head of marketing Christian Wray.

The next phase of this digital strategy will see the development of the Sudlows United Arab Emirates website which is due to go live next month.

Visit the new site at www.sudlows.com.

The post Sudlows launches new website, pushes new Critical Infrastructures division appeared first on theenergyst.com.

There is a tendency in UK industry to think that the disappearance of reactive power charges from itemised energy bills has killed the argument for installing power factor correction (PFC) equipment. But that view doesn’t reflect the full story. Because as the investment cost and leadtimes for obtaining new power supplies from electricity suppliers continue to escalate then power factor has taken on a new relevance.

Power factor (PF) is the ratio of ‘real’ power that is used by businesses (in kW) to the ‘apparent’ power that needs to be produced (in kVA). A power factor equal to 1 (unity) demonstrates that power is being produced and consumed most efficiently, and all UK utilities aim for a minimum of 0.95.

Many UK industrial and commercial consumers have low power factors (well below 0.8) due to their extensive use of lightly loaded electric motors, pumps, fluorescent lighting and other inductive equipment. The impact of low power factor is that more apparent power needs to be produced to meet the real power requirement of businesses. Ultimately, this imposes costs on society, such as the need for more generation capacity as well as additional transmission and distribution network capacity, and increased greenhouse gas emissions.

There is a relatively simple solution available in the form of PFC equipment, such as automatic capacitor banks. In fact, the BEAMA Capacitor Manufacturers Association (BCMA) has estimated that in the UK this equipment has removed the need to generate a further 2 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity a year and maintains CO2 emissions savings of 1.2 million tonnes.

Even so, many manufacturing sites are still operating close to their maximum load, so that future expansion would require major investment in new power infrastructure. Yet installation of PFC equipment can often improve the site’s energy efficiency to the point where extra capacity is freed up to cope with new, additional loads using only the existing supplies. And that capacity is there ready to use, right now.

To quote just one example, we recently helped a small manufacturing company that was planning to expand production. But they had been quoted £150,000 to construct the additional power infrastructure they needed, combined with the disruption involved in digging up local roads. Our survey established that the site was operating at a power factor of 0.57. Installing PFC soon restored this to 0.95, effectively freeing up an extra 81 A to more than meet the demand of the new facility.

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The post Industrial supply issues bring a new relevance to power factor correction appeared first on theenergyst.com.

Schneider Electric says a data centre upgrade is enabling Ferrari’s F1 team to action data insights at full throttle.

“The data centre hosts solutions and systems used by our engineers during races”, said Antonio Tornatore, head of process at Scuderia Ferrari. “This means that systems have to be totally reliable because during a race focus has to be entirely on the car and the race itself and not on the tools.”

“We collect and analyse telemetry (remote monitoring of dozens of sensors in the car during an actual race), weather, and strategic data during races. We continuously process this data in real time in order to refine and constantly improve our performance. At the same time our IT team collects and processes system operation data for continuous performance tuning,” said Tornatore.

“We needed to consolidate operations and introduce new technologies to our research and development data centre. Our engineering department wanted better performance and we needed to manage remotely. Our facility needed to be customisable, the rooms needed to be able to change their configuration easily. Because of all of the rules changes of the business, a modular type of data centre was required,” said Tornatore.

“Working with Schneider Electric allowed us to create a very flexible data centre infrastructure,” said Francesca Duri, chief technology officer of ICT. “Ferrari’s data centres were created primarily to host Formula One computation systems. They have to be flexible, modular, efficient and reliable.”

“System server and data centre reliability is very important to our Formula One success,” he continued. “For example, the most important systems in our data centre are the ones that calculate the car’s external aerodynamics. The results of the aerodynamic simulations must be ready in time for us to create the parts for the next Grand Prix,” said Duri.

Race strategy

Ferrari commissioned its first Schneider Electric / APC data centre in 2004. That data centre was equipped with a cooling capacity of 20kW per rack. The InfraStruxure modular / scalable system serves as the physical infrastructure supporting computational fluid dynamics platform and the simulations essential to the aerodynamic modelling of Ferrari’s championship Formula One cars.

The on-demand architecture of InfraStruxure provides power, cooling, management and services in a rack-optimised design, which is scalable in accommodating server capacity. Schneider claims such scalability eliminates much of the planning guesswork, reduces installation downtime risk, and allows for the optimisation of today’s high-density computing installations. The integrated cooling system consists of In-Row precision air conditioners, and high-efficiency Hot Aisle Containment Systems (HACS).

Ferrari’s second data centre was built in 2015. A 300 square meter site was created to support Ferrari’s Formula One car design team. Like the earlier data centre, it is also equipped with high-efficiency cooling solutions, automatic static transfer switch (ATS) and hot aisle containment.

“The Schneider Electric solutions developed over the years have helped to meet our high precision flexibility and reliability needs,” said CIO Boero. “Those solutions allow us to achieve a high level of manageability. Once we adopted the latest Schneider Electric data centre management platform, we were able to work in a more strategic and predictive way. In addition, if we need to intervene ‘on the fly’, to modify certain components, the Schneider Electric solution lets us do that with an extremely high degree of security and flexibility,” he added.

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The post New data centre means Ferrari F1 team can action data at full throttle appeared first on theenergyst.com.

In a new white paper, the firm outlines the factors shaping service requirements – and what they mean for data centre operations and maintenance.

Despite data centres playing a key role in big data, machine learning and the digital economy, data centre maintenance technology has not kept pace, the firm argues.

Within the paper, Schneider Electric says it sees seven technology trends influencing data centre monitoring: Embedded system performance and cost improvements; cyber security; cloud computing; big data analytics; mobile computing; machine learning and; automation for labour efficiency. The firm outlines how it sees that happening – and advises on what data centre operators should consider when reviewing their own digital remote monitoring capabilities.

Download the paper for free here.

Related articles:

Schneider cool on raising data centre temperatures

Data centre temperatures to rise and London demand to fall?

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Some 500 speakers will present at the industry gathering, which now also incorporates new events Cloud Security Expo and Smart IoT London.

Presentations this year include content from Yahoo!, Deutsche Bank, Ford Motor Company, Deloitte, Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Research, Virtus Data Centre and Standard Bank of South Africa.

There are also 500 data centre technology and service companies exhibiting, including Huawei, Riello, Huber + Suhner, Siemens, Schneider, Brand-rex, Eaton, Anixter, Rittal and Munters.

According to the organisers, the show is a must-attend event, whether you are responsible for a server room or a tier 4 data centre, or anything in between.

Register now for your FREE tickets: www.datacentreworld.com/MissionCriticalPower

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