In today’s digital age, data centres and IT systems are the backbone upon which organizations exist, making it essential to ensure their functionality, reliability, and 24/7 continuity. However, in a country facing power challenges due to ESKOM’s failing infrastructure, ensuring uninterrupted power supply to these critical loads has become a challenging task.
Enter Standby Systems
Amidst this power crisis, Standby Systems, with our range of Riello UPS systems, offers backup power solutions for data centres and IT systems in Southern Africa. With over 250 years of combined experience in Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) and emergency power backup solutions, we offer a lifeline to businesses that can’t afford downtime. Our commitment to Riello UPS, formerly known as AROS UPS, has been an ongoing relationship as a sole distributor for the Italian-designed and built product since 2003. This has ensured our success in supporting the African continent with reliable and complete UPS solutions, with the service and spare parts backup.
Achieving Unprecedented Availability
Data centres operate on a simple premise: downtime is not an option. To ensure this, Standby Systems adheres to the TIER standard, aiming for system availability between 99.9% and 99.999%. This remarkable uptime is achieved using high-quality Riello UPS systems that are reliable, versatile, compact, and parallelable, offering the flexibility to adapt to various loads and integrate seamlessly with other components like electrical generators. The Riello product range has a wide variety of UPS systems suitable for use in the IT and data centre UPS environment and includes both stand-alone and parallel configurations of any N+X redundancy levels required in both monolithic, rack, or modular UPS solutions. Some of the more popular Riello UPS products used in data centres are the high-efficiency MHE units, the SDU rack mount series, the NextEnergy high power series, and the highly successful Multi Power modular series.
Space Optimization
Space optimization is another vital consideration for data centres. Virtualizing servers is a step in the right direction, but it’s equally important to choose UPS systems with small footprints to avoid wasting valuable space. Standby Systems offers UPS ranges like Multi Sentry, Sentryum, Multi Power, NextEnergy, and Master HE with ideal dimensions for space-conscious data centres.
Critical Characteristics and Applications
Standby Systems’ UPS solutions boast a range of essential characteristics.
- They deliver an extremely high availability of 99.9999%, ensuring that systems are almost always up and running.
- Their UPS designs are optimized for the lowest energy consumption from the concept stage to production and roll-out.
- They offer the smallest footprints in the market, reducing both physical size and the usage of expensive data centre space.
- They achieve the lowest carbon footprint by maximizing efficiency and minimizing power consumption due to heat loss.
- This, in turn, reduces the cooling load required for any data centre.
Additionally, the Riello UPS range from Standby systems allows for ultimate flexibility in UPS system configurations and redundancy options. These features make them ideal for various applications, including data centres, IT systems, server farms, large databases, telecommunications, and the financial sector.
The Role of UPS Systems
UPS systems pick up the load when power fluctuations or outages threaten to disrupt operations. Their primary purpose is to maintain the infrastructure until consistent power returns or until longer-term emergency power backup systems kick in. UPS systems also play a crucial role in protecting equipment from power surges.
Choosing the Right UPS System
When it comes to UPS systems, one size does not fit all. Those in the market for a UPS must consider their power densities, efficiency goals, and management capabilities to make the right choice. Read our blog Reliable Power Solutions for Computer Rooms and Data Centres. In it, we feature the AROS Riello Multi Power UPS, which is recommended for data centres as a high specification and flexible Modular and scalable UPS solution.
Power Challenges and Backup Solutions
ESKOM’s power grid has become increasingly unstable. In response to this, businesses, industrial sites, data centres, and IT systems have turned to backup power generation systems. For data centres, ensuring uninterrupted power is critical. Even brief power interruptions exceeding 20 milliseconds can lead to IT system crashes. Longer interruptions of 60 seconds or more can result in recovery periods lasting hours or even days. The cost of such downtime can run into millions of rands, impacting customer satisfaction, a company’s brand and reputation.
Critical Success Factors for Power Backup
In this context, a UPS is possibly the most crucial component in any data centre. However, UPS batteries are often considered the weakest link. Achieving an optimal balance between capital costs and the availability of uninterruptible electrical power is essential. Several factors come into play when making these critical decisions.
- Providing UPS Power to Critical Loads
While most data centres incorporate UPS systems to safeguard IT equipment, the cooling systems are often backed up by generators only. In the event of a power loss, cooling systems may momentarily shut down until the facility switches to generator power. Depending on the cooling system, this downtime could last several minutes. In low-density data centres, this may not be a significant issue. However, in high-density environments, thermal overload can occur within seconds. This makes it imperative to back up HVAC systems with UPS power.
- Designing for Reliability and Availability
Mechanical and electrical systems will eventually fail. To ensure reliability and availability, data centres are designed with redundant components and systems. Redundancy increases reliability but also comes with higher costs. Data centres typically achieve desired reliability with an N+1 design topology, balancing redundancy with affordability.
- UPS Battery Runtimes
The UPS battery runtime should ideally carry the critical load until the generators kick in (typically 10-20 seconds). However, the actual battery backup time depends on factors like risk tolerance and the resilience of supported IT applications. Internet giants design hyperscale data centres with 1-2 minutes of battery runtime, while financial institutions often opt for 10-15 minutes. UPS battery backup time decisions involve trade-offs between capital costs and annual maintenance expenses, and because a battery is a short- to medium-term consumable item in a UPS plant, the battery replacement cost either as a preventative measure near the end of design life or when it fails.
Choosing UPS Battery Technology
Traditional VRLA batteries have been used for decades. However, the newer lithium-based technology batteries such as LiFePhO4 products offer numerous benefits, including longer life expectancy (This is however not proven in the field as yet as the technology is relatively new) and high cyclability, but they are also not recyclable in Africa and pose a “Green” problem as they can contain poisonous chemicals such as Cobalt and Magnesium. An option to use is the Lead Carbon battery which is easily recyclable and offers just as many charge/discharge cycles.
Powering the Future of Data Centres
Standby Systems and Riello UPS provide a lifeline for data centres and IT systems, ensuring that they remain reliable and resilient in the face of power fluctuations and outages. For more information, visit Standby Systems’ website or contact us at 011 794 2541 or 011 794 3406 or WhatsApp 082 450 2361.