INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Data Centres
New Schneider Electric
research analyses data centre
deployment speed
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M
odularity is a key design approach
for today’s data centres, helping
to drive trends such as edge
computing and hyper-convergence, while
reducing both deployment times and capital
expenditure costs. Although long familiar
at component and rack level, modularity
is increasingly being extended to include
larger blocks of equipment or pods which
comprise groups of IT racks sharing critical
infrastructure components such as a PDU
(power distribution unit), network router and
cooling systems including containment and
air handling.
More recently, modularity has been taken
to an even higher level, the Pod Frame,
which incorporates many elements typically
associated with the building itself into
a free-standing structure to allow faster
deployment of IT equipment racks. A new
White Paper from Schneider Electric, the
global specialist in the digital transformation
of energy management and automation,
analyses the benefits of deploying Pod
Frames compared with existing practices.
Entitled Analysis of How Data Center Pod
Frames Reduce Cost and Accelerate IT
Rack Deployments, whitepaper number
263 describes the key attributes of Pod
Frames and how they can help data centre
managers meet the typical challenges of
adding capacity to their facilities. It also
compares the rollout of IT equipment
using traditional pods with a similar sized
deployment using Pod Frames from the
point of view of cost and time taken.
An IT Pod Frame is a free-standing support
structure that acts as a mounting pod for
data centre infrastructure and as a docking
point for the IT racks that comprise it. Air
containment systems are assembled on
the free-standing frame rather than being
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attached directly to racks as in traditional
pods. This makes moving racks into an Pod
Frame more efficient.
IT Pod Frames also have built-in support
structures for mounting of services, thereby
eliminating much of the construction
work needed for overhead ceiling support
grids for network and power cabling and
sometimes air ducts. As this support
infrastructure is built into the Pod Frame, it
can be deployed more quickly. Furthermore,
this enables large-scale equipment rollouts
to be approached as assembly rather
than construction operations, therefore
requiring intervention and oversight from
fewer external operators such as building
inspectors and construction specialists.
A comparative analysis of a data centre
deployment using an IT Pod Frame versus
one using a traditional pod was conducted
using a Schneider Electric Reference Design
for a room with a 1.3MW lT load. The load
consisted of nine pods, each having 24 racks.
The study showed that when utilising the
IT Pod Frame CapEx, savings of 15% were
achieved when compared to a traditional
approach. Most of these were attributed
to the reductions in labour cost thanks to
the Pod Frames having structural mounting
properties which reduces the need for
building ceiling and floor structures.
In terms of speed of deployment, the Pod
Frame approach produced a saving of 21%,
or 66.5 days compared with 84 days using
the traditional approach. Again, much of this
was due to the reduced amount of ceiling
and floor construction work that resulted
from the Pod Frame approach.
In late 2017, Schneider Electric announced
HyperPod, a rack-ready data centre system
designed to deploy IT in increments of
8 to 12 racks. Part of Schneider Electric’s
EcoStruxure for Data Center architecture,
HyperPod’s innovative design supports all of
today’s rack types. Its pod style architecture,
with integrated power, cooling, cabling,
software management and containment,
enables racks of IT equipment to roll into
place, similar to a docking station, without
the complexity and time associated with
traditional IT deployments. n
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