Climate-friendly and energy-efficient RCS rack
Maria Anzbach/Vienna – Vienna Airport handled around 23.7 million passengers in 2022, making it Austria’s largest airport. This requires a correspondingly fail-safe and efficient IT infrastructure, which has now been expanded with a new data center and brought up to the latest state of the art. It was implemented by EPS Electric Power Systems, a data center infrastructure builder from Lower Austria. The internationally active IT infrastructure company has been a partner of Flughafen Wien AG for more than ten years and has already co-designed the primary data center.
“In order to be sufficiently prepared for the future, it was necessary to build another data center in addition to our main location. A holistic planning approach and professional support were particularly important to us, which is why we decided to rely on EPS’s expertise again,” says Susanne Ebm, Head of Information Systems at Vienna Airport.
After around 1.5 years of planning and pandemic-related delays, the new data center was successfully put into operation. At its heart is the efficient cooling of IT equipment through the use of RCS racks, so-called Regulated Cooling Solutions racks, with targeted and adjustable cold air supply. “The integrated cold and hot area separation at the rack level massively reduces energy consumption in the data center. Only what actually needs to be cooled is cooled. This is not only more efficient and climate-friendly, but also reduces energy costs,” explains Peter Reisinger, Sales Manager at EPS.
Photos: karinahamer.com
In addition to the safe and redundant power supply, emphasis was placed on high availability and residual current measurement was used, which reacts more quickly in the event of a problem and makes regular maintenance and inspection windows obsolete. The entire area – i.e. the IT whitespace with climate clasp as well as UPS, battery and technical rooms – was equipped with a digital leak warning system. The structured OM4 MPO fiber optic cabling was already used in the main data center and could not be missing in the new data center . With the two data centres, Vienna Airport currently operates 1,200 virtual and around 200 physical servers with a total capacity of 92 kilowatts and a reserve of 150 kilowatts. Ebm adds: “This means that we are up to date in terms of IT technology and can easily supply the entire airport campus and all airport customers.”
The project scope in detail
- IT UPS switchgear and low-voltage installation with redundancy level 2N
- Residual current monitoring systems AC, pulse, and all-current sensitive
- RCS server racks with cold air regulation to reduce cooling costs
- Structured Fiber OM4 Netscale MPO Storage & LAN MTP Data Cabling for 40/100Gbit Migration with High Packing Density
- Upgrade raised floor
- Overhead cable routing system with bend radius control
- Digital leak warning system for locating leaks
- Monitoring and alerting system
- IEC Lock Detachable Power Cables
- 19″ PCS IT-Power Cable Sets
- Commissioning / Trial operation and project management
