Data Center Power supplies are the key to a reliable and secure infrastructure. The power supply provides power to all the devices, such as servers, storage systems, and networking equipment in a data center.
The Important Thing About Redundancy in Data Center Power Supply
Data center power supplies enable data centers to run mission-critical applications. When it comes to mission-critical systems, reliability is of utmost importance. You need a power supply that can provide clean and reliable power for your critical IT infrastructure. A power supply that can protect your system from voltage sags and spikes, overcurrents, and under voltages.
The Power Supplies should be capable of providing both uninterrupted and stable power with high-efficiency levels. A data center power supply’s primary purpose is to ensure that your servers, storage systems, and networking equipment are always running.
Mission-critical applications’ high reliability and availability requirements require a power supply that delivers uninterrupted, reliable operation under a wide range of operating conditions. Essential attributes of a data center power supply are:
- Low Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF)
- High energy efficiency
- High reliability/availability/durability
- Support for wide input voltage variations
The data center’s mission is to ensure that the information technology operations are functioning continuously, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The task-critical power supplies in the data center have been designed with redundancy and uptime as critical objectives.
The power system must include enough UPSs and generators to support all of the equipment in the data center for a minimum of 2 days. In addition, backup batteries provide enough energy to transfer all of the data from the systems to tape drives, hard drives, and other media for safekeeping during an outage. The backup fuel tanks are on site and can support an outage of up to 10 days.
As such, enterprises prefer to choose power supplies with high efficiency. However, the traditional power supply cannot meet the stringent requirements of servers, storage, and infrastructure in high-performance data centers because they are usually designed with a 60%~90% efficiency.
Data Center Energy Efficiency
Energy efficiency is gaining ground with data centers. Many of the challenges associated with managing power requirements within the data center have been overcome. The need to support mission-critical operations, meet increased performance levels and reduce operating costs has resulted in significant improvements in the design and function of data center power systems.
The first step when analyzing your power needs is understanding your Data Center’s power profile. This can vary by building age, location, local climate, and cooling systems. Sometimes, a Data Center power draw can make up as much as half of the total monthly operating costs.
Next is understanding the difference between peak and off-peak power pricing rates. Usually, these rates are priced at a differential of 8-10 cents per kilowatt hour during peak hours compared to off-peak, which is generally 4-6 cents per kilowatt hour. This difference can be used to your advantage if you shift non-critical applications or schedule maintenance out of peak hours.
With the rising energy cost, data center administrators are looking for new ways to keep their centers running efficiently. To determine the most effective cooling system, they must first consider the characteristics of the computer systems they intend to cool.
Worth to read: Why Developing Green Data Centers in Indonesia is Much Easier
Hot-Aisle and Cold-Aisle
The first step in selecting a cooling system is determining if you have hot aisle/cold aisle or hot aisle/hot aisle cooling. Hot aisle/hot aisle systems are becoming more popular, but many facilities are still using hot aisle/cold aisle.
The primary difference between these two configurations is that the hot aisle/hot aisle has cold air passing through the racks while the hot aisle/cold aisle has hot air passing through them. This article will focus on hot aisle/hot aisle cooling because it is becoming more and more popular as data centers become more efficient and need less power.
Radiant Cooling
Radiant cooling, also called “free cooling,” uses free air as the primary heat exchange medium. It contrasts with air-conditioning systems that rely on a liquid refrigerant as the heat exchange medium to remove waste heat from a building.
In practice, data centers with serial dilution ventilation can achieve much lower internal temperatures than the enthalpy method would predict because the cooling effect of mixing outdoor air into the plant space is greater than predicted by enthalpy calculations. The basic principle behind this over-performance is that it is easier to cool warm air than cold air.
Data Center Energy Source and Environmental Impact
Most of the time, many businesses use servers for storage and backup..However, they can also use to run applications. Some of these applications are very simple, and others are more complex. For example, a user could run a database on a server inside their data center to run a web application or an e-commerce site.
The most common source of power for data centers is fossil fuels because it is the most efficient. However, many data centers are moving away from using fossil fuels as their primary power source. This is because electricity comes from fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, oil), and releasing fossil fuels into the environment causes pollution.
Data centers have been trying to find newer sources of energy that aren’t so harmful to the environment. Some examples of these new sources include wind turbines and solar panels. The goal is to use less electricity in the future and rely less on fossil fuels to power our data centers.
Conclusion
Data centers are a crucial part of companies’ operations, as they host all of the information that makes their business run smoothly. If a corporation owns its data center and employs a professional IT staff, it is responsible for providing the infrastructure that supports its systems and hardware. This includes ensuring enough power in the building to fuel computers, cooling equipment, and other electrical needs.
Businesses need a team to help them choose the best generators for their data centers. If you think something other than this is something you’d be interested in learning more about, you can always hire an expert specializing in generators and data center power supply.
Finally, data center designers must decide what cooling technology best meets their needs and budget requirements. There are three basic types of technologies: air-cooled, water-cooled, and liquid-cooled chillers.
Read also: Jakarta Green Data Center, More Strategic and Low Latency.