Universal Electric Customer Case Study: Colt Data Center Services

Tag line/Summary:Colt Data Center Services can provide enterprises with an on-sitedata center in as little as 16 weeks. Universal Electric Corporation’s StarLine Track Busway delivers the power distribution flexibility needed to truly enable the modular data center.

Sidebar:“Colt Modular Data Centers have the look and feel of a traditional data center, with the time-to-market of a container solution, and come complete with the infrastructure needed to run them.”

Sidebar, Guy Ruddock Quote: “Colt Data Center Services and Universal Electric share the same visions for modular solutions that have simplicity, reliability, and standardization as core design goals.”, Guy Ruddock, VP – Design & Delivery Colt Data Center Services [Note: slightly paraphrased from phone interview]

Sidebar, Colt Customer Quote: Colt shipped a modular data center to Iceland for Verne Global. The manufactureddata center provides over 5,300 square feet (500 square meters)of space taking advantage of inexpensive power and cooling in Iceland for high performance computing. “Colt’s team enabled us to bring to market the first dual-sourced 100 percent renewably powered data center in the world; in a time frame that no-one could match. They have a high quality approach to data center development, bringing together experience, engineering, fabrication, and testing.” Tate Cantrell, CTO, Verne Global

Challenges in Building Data Centers

When building a data center, companies face very long lead times and frequent slips in schedules, large cost overruns, and constantly changing requirements. Typically it can take one to two years from the start of design until the data center is finally ready for the technology equipment to be installed. During that time, the technology equipment to be deployed is likely to change. This can alter the requirements for two of the most difficult to change systems of a data center: power and cooling.

In addition, the demand for compute and storage is constantly increasing. Companies need capacity on-demand to be able to respond quickly to changes in business. To accommodate growth, larger data centers are built, but the space may not be fully utilized for an unknown period of time. Power and cooling system are designed and built for the full capacity of the data center becausethese systems can’t be easily changed once the data center is in operation. Cooling and powering a half empty data center is very inefficient, adding to already high operating costs and tying up capital.

Finally, people who have the expertise to properly design, build, and test a data center can be expensive and challengingto find. It is an exacting task to make sure every last detail is correct in the design and implementation of redundant systems and to ensure that the systems are properly tested. In the worst case, flaws in the design or build phase go undetected during tests and can lead to an outage in the future. An outage that occurs due to a single overlooked implementation detail can be particularly embarrassing and costly, particularly when a company believes it paid for a data center with full resiliency.

Increasingly, companies are building data centers in locations they would not traditionally have deployed them, such as closer to their customers to reduce latency, or in locations like Iceland to take advantage of greener/less expensive power and cooling. The expertise to ensure that a resilient data center is correctly implemented can be even more difficult to obtain in some of these locations.

The bottom line is that it is not economical to design, build, and operate small, single-tenant data centers (under 100,000 square feet / 9,000 square meters). Most typical data centers are in the2,500 to 100,000 squarefeet (225 to 9,000 square meters)range. These data centers have very inflexible power and cooling systems that can’t meet current or future demands for equipment density, and may have undetected problems in the design of the redundant systems.To remain competitive, companies need to be as efficient as possible, cut costs, and respond as quickly as possible to changes in business demand. The traditional custom-built data center can no longer meet these needs.

Colt Data Center Services and the Modular Data Center

Colt Technology Services, based in London, offers telecommunications, data center, and IT managed services with operations in 22 countries. Colt has developed significant data center experience by building and currently operating over 250 data center sites across Europe. In 2010, Colt recognized that custom-building data centers was no longer viable for most companies and launched Colt Data Center Services to deliver modular data centers. Colt’s ftec Data Centers deliver flexibility in power, cooling, and available space. A modular Colt ftec Data Center can be delivered on site in as little as 16 weeks with thepower and cooling equipment needed to run it.

The first generation of pre-built data centers utilized standard shipping containers.The fixed size of the container restricted the layout and amount of usable space. As many of these data centers-in-a-box were offered by computer manufacturers, the design was for specific equipment that couldn’t easily be changed. The containers only addressed a portion of the problem, as the site was still required to provide all of the power and cooling infrastructure other than the internal distribution inside the container.

Colt takes a different approach. Theftec modular data center solution is built using pieces that can still be easily transported, but they are assembled on site to resemble a traditional custom-built data center. The complete solution includes modules that provide the power and cooling infrastructure as well as modules to hold the technology equipment. Containerized data centers are like mobile homes, designed to be mobile, which leads to a number of compromises. Colt’s modular data centers are similar to prefabricated homes constructed in a factory in pieces that are still manageable to ship. When the pieces are assembled on-site,the house shares the attributes of a traditional building without the compromises of being designed to be mobile. Gartner and the 451 Group have said that Colt’s solution is the only true second-generation modular data center.

The benefits of Colt’s ftec modular data center solution are:

Flexibility. Modular solutions are very flexible and enable companies to operate pay-as-you-grow data centers where modules areadded as needed.
Reduced costs. Engineering and on-site labor costs are dramatically reduced. Relatively small on-site teams are needed to assemble the delivered modular pieces.
Faster time to market and higher quality. In addition to providing a much faster time-to-market, building modules in a factory setting allows much higher quality controls than when building on-site.
Less risk. The typical risks associated with building a custom data center such as construction delays, budget overruns, and out-of-date designs are mitigated.

How UEC’s StarLine Track Busway enables the Colt Modular Data Center

Universal Electric Corporation’s StarLine Track Busway provides modular distribution of power, remote monitoring, and flexibility, makingit a perfect fit for the modular data center. In the Colt solution, two StarLine Track Busways run across the ceilings of the technology modules above the equipment racks. The busways provide the racks with access to two diverse sources of power for redundancy, including all three phases at the maximum design current level. Each rack connects to the buswaysvia tap-off units,which include the circuit breakers and can determine how much power is available and which phases are used. No under-floor wiring is required,which enables more efficient cooling. The busway and tap-off units replace the traditional PDU, saving valuable raised-floor real estate for technology racks. Since redundant power is available to each rack, the need for static transfer switches is also eliminated.

The tap-off units in the StarLine system have the ability to monitor power usage, which provides measurement down to the individual rack level. The data is sent to a central monitoring system to enable remotemonitoring of the power systems to help ensure efficient operations.

Finally, StarLine Track Busway provides a massive increase in flexibility. Changes, such as adding or removing a rack, are accomplished by simply connecting or disconnecting a tap-off unit to the overhead busway, which can be performed safely without any downtime. As the full amount of power is available over each rack, changes in equipment power usage don’t require any new wiring runs. Coltis able to choose 250, 400, or 800 amp busways to meet power density requirements. This allows Colt to build modules that scale from 500 to 3,000 Watts per square foot (5,400 to 32,000 Watts per square meter).The same tap-off units are used on each system, which increases simplicity and flexibility. Colt designs its modules to have a 25-year life span. StarLine Track Busway is a core part of that design, lasting as long as the module, even though the systems that are deployed may change every few years.

Summary

Colt Data Center Services and Universal Electric Corporation provide flexible, modular solutions that help enterprises dramatically reduce the costs of building and running data centers. Colt’s modular data center solution with Universal Electric Corporation’s StarLine Track Busway is used successfully by companies in the financial services, airline, manufacturing,marketing, web, and technology services industries.