Flexible standardisation for data centres
January 2019, IT in Manufacturing

Schneider Electric has created flexible standardisation for data centre operators that allows the company to support the different sized deployments its customers require, while eliminating inconsistencies across data centres.

“HyperPod is a rack-ready system for deploying IT at scale in increments of 8 to 12 racks,” explains Riaan de Leeuw, VP IT division, Anglophone Africa, Schneider Electric. “The freestanding support structure allows for air containment to various types of racks and can adapt to a variety of cooling and power configurations.

“It is equivalent to our custom builds, is flexible and scalable enough to fit our varied design concepts, has the quality and appearance we want to deliver to our customers, and can be quickly installed with minimum customisation. Basically, the data centre customers just have to bring their servers.

“In a US case study, Schneider Electric had to create a colocation environment that appeared and operated the same, despite multiple locations. The colocation spaces also had to be configured appropriately to handle dynamic density loads and multi-tenant needs.

“Fitting a 2 MW customer and a couple of 500 kW customers, in a 4 MW space takes flexibility. In addition, the client wanted its tenants to have the same experience regardless of their geographic location.”

Schneider Electric was on site, putting all the pieces together, implementing HyperPod for the first time and essentially creating a proof-of-concept to take to any of the other client locations. Once the prefabricated, premanufactured HyperPod arrived, the deployment of a 15 metre length of aisle containment space took only one week, compared to the three weeks it would have taken with old systems.

“The IIoT has brought an increasing volume of machine data, while outsourcing enterprise applications into the cloud has elevated the importance of resilience in distributed IT environments and edge data centres, all of which redefine the need of availability for a connected and always-on generation of users,” concludes de Leeuw.

“Clearly, a new and dynamic approach to data centre operations is required and, in addition to HyperPod, Schneider Electric offers data centre operators other technological improvements, such as Ecoflair Indirect Air Economizer and the Galaxy VX UPS.”

For more information contact Prisca Mashanda, Schneider Electric SA, +27 11 254 6400, prisca.mashanda@schneider-electric.com, www.schneider-electric.co.za

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