When a trip

became a journey

How issues in data centres

led to the creation of a

powerful BMS partnership

Reece Thomas

Controls Sales Manager

Airedale

Alex Metcalfe

Sales Manager

Socomec

What keeps critical data safe?

Power & Cooling in data centres

Story of the Airedale & Socomec partnership

ACIS Software

HVAC Optimisation

Power Event Analysis

Q&A

What keeps critical data safe?

What keeps critical data safe?

Power

• One rack takes 10-20kW of power

• Typical 11kW is up from 5kW in 2005

• Loss of power to the rack can result in data

unavailability or corruption.

• According to Ponemon Institute 2016 report, a single

outage average cost is $740,357 for a data centre, up

40% on 2010.

• May 2017, British Airways data centre was down for

15 minutes: £150M

Cooling

• Every watt of power used by a server is dissipated

into the air as heat.

• Overheating a server will cause it to shut down (best

case) or become corrupt, potentially resulting in loss

of data.

Power and Cooling: Complex Systems

Data centres have 2 separate A & B supplies up

to the rack.

Critical loads are protected by UPS on each

supply.

Protection is coordinated so that the nearest

device to the fault trips first.

Overloaded circuits, grid faults, rotary UPS,

harmonics, storms, poor connections, human

error could all cause trips.

PowerSupply A

Utility

Supply A

Genset

Supply B

Utility

Supply B

Genset

Supply A

Transfer panel

Supply B

Transfer panel

Supply A

UPSSupply B

UPS

Supply A

UPS panel

Supply B

UPS panel

Supply A

PDU/RPP or

Busbar

Supply B

PDU/RPP or

Busbar

IT rack

Power and Cooling: Complex Systems

Cooling equipment usually n + x

Chiller sequencers used to balance loading of plant.

Temperature set points may be dynamic.

Chillers may operate in three modes dependent on

ambient (mechanical, concurrent, free cooling).

Pressure, humidity and temperature monitored in

data halls.

Valve and damper positions all controlled

automatically.

Chiller Chiller

CRAC Units

Chiller

Cooling

Server RacksCRAC Units

How is this Managed?

Power & Cooling are complex systems!

Even the lowest tier Data Centres (Tier 1) have

to deliver 99.671% availability.

Redundancy built in.

Intelligent management of systems is key.

BMS software readily available that monitors

power & cooling systems.

Not many true power & cooling EXPERTS.

Airedale & Socomec

Airedale are Cooling and Control

Experts

45 years’ IT cooling experience

Global footprint

Trusted from edge to hyperscale

Solutions approach

Socomec are Power Experts

Founded in 1922

Undisputed specialists in UPS

systems, mains supply

changeover, power conversion

and measurement

10% of turnover reinvested in R&D

Airedale & Socomec

How the partnership

formed

How a trip became a journey

Airedale were approached by

several leading data centre and

facility operators concerned about

trips on their power equipment.

How a trip became a journey

The faults were causing downtime

which is obviously a huge issue for

servers.

How a trip became a journey

Faults can be managed and worked

around…but in many cases the root

cause could not be identified.

How a trip became a journey

Customers were starting to lose

trust in the operators. How can you

guarantee uptime if you don’t know

what is causing the faults?

How a trip became a journey

Fault

Power

Supply A

Utility

Supply A

Genset

Supply B

Utility

Supply B

Genset

Supply A

Transfer panel

Supply B

Transfer panel

Supply A

UPSSupply B

UPS

Supply A

UPS panel

Supply B

UPS panel

Supply A

PDU/RPP or

Busbar

Supply B

PDU/RPP or

Busbar

IT rack

The characteristics of a fault changedepending on the power source:• Transformer• Genset• UPS on battery• UPS in static bypass

Solution

Solution

Airedale are already a provider of

industry-leading BMS & Control solutions.

Our knowledge of air conditioning

systems allow us to go beyond many

BMS offerings, offering true optimisation

of data centre cooling.

The partnership with Socomec allows us

to extend this expertise to power systems

and offer a complete critical systems

management solution.

Solution

BMS + PMS + EMS + HVAC Optimisation

Airedale & Socomec

How ACIS monitors

and optimises the facility

Uniting the indoor and outdoor units to optimise

freecool and cooling systems

Intelligent Controls

How ACIS optimises HVAC

Central Control

Central Control

with GUI

Central Control

with GUICross platform

Optimisation

SPOG

Single pane of glass

SPOG

Single pane of glass

PMS

EMS

Bureau

Analytics

Report

Airedale & Socomec

How ACIS manages

power events

Client Requirements

How ACIS manages power events

• Detect electrical event propagation through

a data centre installation

• Events to be as follows:

-Electrical: sag, swell, interrupt

-ACB, MCCB: opening

• Meters to be synchronised within 10ms

Events to be >10ms

• Head-end system to interrogate meters and

display event propagation

• Cost per metering point to be minimised

• Alarm management to focus on the priority

alarms

Class 0.5 accuracy inc current sensors

SNTP time synchronisation

Event detection, recording & time-stamping

Prioritisation of alarms

Diris A40 meter

How ACIS manages power events

Class A network analyser

Report creation

Can capture sags, swells, interrupts

Can also capture transient μs events

Diris Q800 meter

How ACIS manages power events

Future Developments

How ACIS manages power events

• Now: analyse event after it has happened

• Future: predict & prevent an event happening

• Fault tolerant IT networks with isolation

monitoring

• Permanent RCM monitoring and alarming

• Pre-UPS grid events analysed and predicted

• Data centre -> power station

• Demand-side response – reduce cooling, switch

to UPS

• Export waste hot water

Airedale & Socomec

How this works in

reality

Current BMS

What current BMS offers

ProblemsPower outage – mains breaker tripCascading alarms

Plotting alarms on the CBEMA curve

The CBEMA curve is used to

visibly represent voltage

events.

It is a common format for

reporting power quality

variation data.

It is a susceptibility profile with

the horizontal axis

representing the duration of

the event, while the vertical

axis indicates the percent of

voltage applied to the power

circuit.

Retrofitting ACIS & Socomec metering

The Diris Q800 & A40 can be

retrofitted into existing panels

Split-core sensors from 75A to

6000A

Existing breaker auxiliaries

picked up as VFC

ACIS to replace existing BMS

Conclusion

DataExtraction

InformationAnalysis

IntelligenceCommunication

ActionCheck

Insight

Thank You