Data Center Availability Class 3 for MKW Holding GmbH
The family-owned company MKW®, headquartered in Weibern, Upper Austria, combines and combines profound know-how from a wide variety of material and process technologies under one roof. The range of services includes metal technology, plastics technology and powder coating as well as sanitary equipment. To ensure that the high quality in all production areas is also guaranteed in the future, MKW® commissioned the total solution provider EPS Electric Power Systems GmbH to expand the existing server room and modernize the IT infrastructure.
A 2N-redundant design of all operationally critical system components was particularly important to Christoph Voraberger, IT project manager of iT works4you GmbH, who acts on behalf of MKW Holding GmbH. The existing IT system room recently proved to be outdated, because in the event of a malfunction, the availability of relevant applications could no longer be guaranteed. The structural fire protection also no longer met the requirements of a high-availability data center infrastructure. In the course of the expansion of the company building, a new server room infrastructure was therefore planned and built by the server room specialist EPS based on the availability requirements and current data center standards (EN50600 ).
Availability class 3 according to EN50600
The new in-house server room now houses two modular and scalable Eaton UPS systems, designed as 2N redundancy. This means that it is an A/B fail-safe multi-path power supply and the highest availability is guaranteed.
“Initially, it was necessary to weigh up how to accommodate the required availability in the existing premises. Due to the structural conditions, there was no high flexibility at the beginning. The availability requirements should be based on what is technically sensible and possible with reasonable effort. The aim was to achieve availability class 3 according to EN50600 for the data center,” recalls Peter Reisinger, Sales Manager at EPS.
To achieve availability, the two UPS battery systems and UPS systems were housed in separate fire compartments. As a fire protection alarm system, an early fire detection system with H2 detection was installed for each protection zone. Fire suppression is carried out by means of a technical fire prevention system in all protected areas.
“Finally, our server room achieved availability class 3, which was enormously important for us, because a data center designed according to class 3 is characterized by redundancies in all essential parts of the data center infrastructure. Our data center can therefore be operated continuously and around the clock,” explains Christoph Voraberger.
Outdoor Mobile Server Room Container (DC CONT)
Since environmental risks such as earth vibrations could not be ruled out during the expansion, the customer also opted for a mobile server room solution in the external container (DC CONT) from EPS. This was placed in the outdoor area and rented for a certain period of time.
This state-of-the-art overall solution is rounded off with an emergency power generator that has been put into operation in the production hall. It serves as a fully automatic emergency power system (NEA) and takes over the supply of the safety-relevant data center infrastructure in the event of a power failure. You can learn more about the strict regulation of emissions from backup generators in data centers here. In addition, a 2N redundant air conditioning system ensures maximum energy efficiency with low operating costs. Innovative RCS racks (Regulated Cooling Solution) direct the generated cold air via the raised floor to the active IT components. This keeps the cooled air directly in the server cabinet and saves valuable energy.
The project in detail
- Data center workshop, site inspection with analysis, basic determination, design planning and implementation planning
- Fully automatic emergency power generator as a self-sufficient emergency power system including exhaust system
- 2N redundant, scalable and modular UPS systems with 20kW power and separate 10-year batteries
- A/B multi-path power supply and distribution to the server rack
- RCM Residual Current Monitoring for UPS End Circuits
- IT raised floor for all areas
- Fiber Optic & CU Cable Routing System with Bend Radius Control
- RCS server racks with targeted and adjustable cold air supply
- 2N redundant server room air conditioning
- LED lighting and escape route lighting
- Fire protection alarm system by means of early fire detection
- Fire suppression through technical fire prevention
- KVM Switches
- Monitoring system, fault alarm system and real-time monitoring system with defined alarm
- Project execution, commissioning with trial operation, load tests and overall function test by EPS
- Assumption of maintenance and repair through service contracts
- Rental server room in a 20f high-security DC container with oxygen reduction system
