A cool way to avoid downtime

Bay Area Internet Solutions (BAIS) is one of the largest managed service providers in Northern California. After several significant service expansions in the early 2000s, the company set out to design and build its second co-location facility in Santa Clara, Calif. In designing the data center, eliminating unforeseen downtime was the main priority and the maintenance window tolerance was low.

April 1, 2010

Bay Area Internet Solutions (BAIS) is one of the largest managed service providers in Northern California. After several significant service expansions in the early 2000s, the company set out to design and build its second co-location facility in Santa Clara, Calif.

In designing the data center, eliminating unforeseen downtime was the main priority and the maintenance window tolerance was low. To meet the need for high-availability services, the adjacent, 83,000-sq-ft facility with 45,000 sq ft of raised floor at full build-out needed a power infrastructure with N + 1 redundancy to consistently deliver “five nines” (99.999%) of availability. The facility also needed to be modular to accommodate future growth and technology upgrades without impacting uptime. Customer demand also dictated the need to accommodate as many as 45 servers in a single rack, which would translate to power densities upwards of 300 W/ft. Finally, to ensure the highest levels of responsiveness from its service personnel, BAIS needed to be able to monitor every piece of equipment impacting the facility’s operation, from computer room air conditioning (CRAC) units to each customer’s individual branch circuits.

The BAIS design team selected and installed six 300 kVA Liebert power protection cabinets (PPCs) with standard TP-1 transformers that provide up to 98.7% efficiency. Power is fed into the facility from the Liebert PPCs to 18 Liebert forward data channel (FDC) power distribution cabinets. To house the customers’ hardware, BAIS provided rack enclosures capable of handling up to 45 high-density servers. The design team selected 47U Knurr racks from Emerson Network Power. The enclosures’ perforated doors with four-point combination locks allow for up to 83% airflow, which enables the racks to be cooled without compromising the equipment’s security inside.

BAIS’ team determined that Emerson Network Power’s cold aisle containment (CAC) system, with an airtight Plexiglas corridor and more than 450 CAC-optimized Knurr rack enclosures, would boost overall cooling efficiency, while simultaneously achieving rack densities of more than 10 kW. The implementation of CAC strategy enables BAIS to manage optimum temperatures at the inlet of its customers’ IT equipment and allow the data center’s cooling units to work in load-sharing operations.

To bring cool air into the contained rack rows, BAIS used the Liebert CW CRAC units with variable speed electronically commutated plug fan technology. The data center floor is surrounded by a sealed air plenum corridor, which functions as an HVAC duct between the facility’s economizers and the data center’s CRAC units. A fan wall comprised of more than 200 fans along the building’s exterior takes in 200,000 cfm of cool air from the outside.

Once the data center was completed, the facility’s ability to achieve efficient performance without sacrificing availability pleased both BAIS and its customers. On the cooling side, the implementation of a cold aisle containment strategy paired with a unique economizer that supplements the data center’s CRAC units has enhanced the data center’s hot and cold air separation.

Information provided by Emerson Network Power.