The BladeRoom System can be rapidly procured, delivered and operational. It is ideal to create any sized data center and benefits from low operational costs with a highly efficient data center cooling system.
The BladeRoom system is infinitely scalable – meaning you can increase capacity rapidly in line with your business growth and deploy new data centers or expand existing sites in record time.
The cooling systems both primary and back-up, use ambient and evaporative cooling for up to 100% of the time depending on the climate) – maximizing efficiency – with full capacity N+1 back-up mechanical DX cooling to ensure compliance with the Uptime Institute Tier 3 requirements. Tier 4 can be achieved by doubling up the primary and back up cooling system.
The BladeRoom system has a 60-year design life and is structurally capable of multi-story configuration – up to seven high without the need for additional strengthening.
It is designed in accordance with the most demanding international standards – and compliant with BS, ISO and IEC amongst other standards. The BladeRoom factory is a large, modern spotlessly clean environment where best practice methods are employed to ensure a safe, efficient and timely production system.
Visits to the BladeRoom factory are encouraged and you are invited to view the production of your data centers as they are assembled. You will be able to check the quality throughout the process and take comfort that your project timescales are going to be met.
The BladeRoom has an advanced cooling system able to match exactly the actual cooling demands of the IT.
The low energy data center cooling system uses standby N+1 mechanical cooling rarely, with principal cooling maximizing free, filtered, ambient air with evaporative cooling. Free cooling is available for up to 100% of the time (depending on the climate) – saving significant amounts of money and carbon emissions.
The design of the BladeRoom system was based around some simple guiding principles:
- to extract maximum heat from IT
- to deploy mechanical cooling rarely, and
- to use filtered ambient air and evaporative cooling to achieve 99+% free air cooling.
The BladeRoom system has been designed around the ventilation requirements to achieve maximum efficiency. Air is delivered seamlessly to where it is needed through the normal working zones so ductwork and raised floors are not required. National, European and International patents pending cover this unique and important development.
Rather than re-circulating and cooling the hot air from the IT as with traditional data center cooling, a BladeRoom data center operates like a server by drawing in highly filtered fresh air, intelligently matching air supply to IT demand and exhausting hot air entirely from the data center as required.
Evaporative and free cooling enables the IT equipment to be cooled with supply air temperatures of between 18C and 24C for more than 99% of the year without the need for mechanical cooling across a range of IT loads, still performing efficiently at 15% utilization of racks.
The back-up mechanical cooling system is only used for emergencies and for partial cooling during extreme weather conditions and is designed to cool 100% of the IT load.
The final phase of the tests involved the entire load being condensed into 10 racks in one IT room delivering 24kW per rack. The BladeRoom system progressively redistributed the cooling load where required responding to the changing load when the heat emulators were moved between IT rooms.
The BladeRoom System has been proven to comfortably deliver in excess of 24kW per rack of IT with 100% free cooling, even with external temperatures in excess of 40°C; something that had not previously been achieved.
Power Distribution
The BladeRoom system is designed to Uptime Institute Tier 3 or 4 specifications, providing N+1 distribution paths for power to IT and allowing maintenance to be carried out on any element of the power infrastructure while the data center is in live operation.
The mechanical and electrical design of the BladeRoom system was developed in conjunction with Red Engineering, world leading M&E specialists in the design of resilient data centers:
- UK’s first Uptime Institute Accredited Tier Designers
- Europe’s first and only Uptime Institute Tier III certified facility
- Europe’s first and only Uptime Institute Tier IV certified design
Small sites may have only a single power management room, whereas large installations will contain many zones, allowing low, medium and high density areas or areas with different levels of resilience.
UPS supplies from the primary electrical infrastructure can enter the power management room through a dedicated service hatch in the floor, meaning all services can be securely buried underground in ducts with nothing left exposed. Alternatively, if the data center inside an existing building, mains services can be brought in at high level through dedicated fireproof service ways.
Each power management room contains 2 x Form 4 Type 6 switchboards into which the A and B UPS supplies are terminated.
If the BladeRoom facility is delivered to site with racks already fitted, tap off units and rack mounted power strips can be installed and commissioned in the factory making racks powered and IT-ready upon arrival to site. Lighting and small power outlets as well as containment are all provided.
Data Center Factory Production
Produced in the factory, BladeRoom data centers require little on site time to be functional.
The factory production process has many advantages over traditional data center construction – reducing risk, providing fixed cost certainty and controlling the environment in which to assemble and commission high specification mission-critical data centers.
The modular data center construction process allows us to quickly build data centers to a consistent specification, producing very large data center facilities in short timeframes.
Quality control is improved as electrical systems, BMS, fire and cooling systems are comprehensively tested in the factory before the BladeRoom data center is delivered to site for final connections and further testing to ensure optimal operation.
Totally unaffected by the elements, scrupulously clean and manned by a consistent and experienced labor force, the factory is an ideal environment in which to build critical IT facilities. This helps to reduce the risk associated with traditional data center construction and fit out through partial factory commissioning and services/control system testing.
60-Year Data Center Build
The modular BladeRoom data center system is built to provide a 60-year design life with the robustness and durability of a traditional build data center but delivered in only a fraction of the time.
Constructed from specially designed and manufactured steel frames, the modules allow generous space for wide hot and cold zones, high ceilings and unparalleled engineering and maintenance access.
In addition to the ‘traditional construction’ attributes of robustness, space and multi-storey capability, a BladeRoom data center can flex in size when required and is relocatable when necessary.
BladeRoom modular data centers are fully compliant with building regulations with an inherent structural capability that allows seven stories or more and has extremely high insulation values.
Quick Build Data Centers
A 120 rack data center can be ordered, built and operational in a 12-week timeframe.
A very fast method of delivering a new data center facility and increasing capacity when required, the BladeRoom system offers real commercial and operational edge.
The BladeRoom system offers you a fast-track program to acquire new data center capacity, operational in only a fraction of the time it takes to build traditionally.
Program compression is possible because the off-site production methodology allows all site and enabling works to take place concurrently with the production of the data center in the factory.
Data Center Racks
The Air Optimizer dynamically supplies conditioned air in accordance with the specific IT demands of an individual cold aisle. In accordance with the efficient blanking system, this allows racks with loads in excess of 24kW to operate comfortably along with lower density racks without the need for any kind of adjustment to the controls.
A comprehensive blanking system is delivered with the BladeRoom whether we supply the racks or not.
Blanks are available for both ‘u’ slots within the racks and full-size rack panels to maintain air separation if racks are absent. This allows you to go live immediately with as few or as many racks as you wish to install.
By removing the BladeRoom full rack blanking panels, you then populate each BladeRoom IT aisle with your own racks or cabinets as demand grows.
Client Specific Data Center Options
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Video Surveillance can be integrated into monitoring systems
Security Access Control
The modular nature of the BladeRoom system ideally lends itself to providing different areas of data center security within zones, depending on requirements.
Access control measures can be agreed and implemented to enhance data center security. These may include CCTV, ‘on the spot’ security photo pass systems, card swipe entry systems or biometric entry systems such as palm readers.
- Magnetic Protection
Dense ferrous metal sheeting is added if required to protect the servers from external magnetic interference.
- RF Protection
Electromagnetic interference can be prevented with the addition of panels containing RF shielding.
- X-ray Protection
Walls will be lead-lined if necessary to protect against X-ray penetration.
- Tier 4
With the addition of a second Air Optimizer and power management room, Tier 4 resilience can be delivered if required. Full Tier 4 can be achieved very economically with the BladeRoom System, providing fault tolerance in an extremely efficient way.
- Data Center CCTV
An active CCTV system is an option. Not just for security monitoring, the internal data center CCTV system allows close real-time monitoring of moving parts and status indicators in conjunction with the remote monitoring system.
An internal data center CCTV system can be specified to work in conjunction with the BladeRoom data center’s integral monitoring system.
A series of cameras both fixed and articulating are strategically sited to give clear and unimpeded views of each IT corridor, supply and exhaust corridors, power management room, control panels and key components inside the Air Optimizer.
This gives anytime access to key read-outs, plant function and general operational activities inside the data center. The data center CCTV system can be fully integrated into the web-enabled remote monitoring system.
To learn more about PTS Data Center Solutions available to support your Data Center Infrastructure Management and Monitoring needs, contact us or visit:
- Data Center Power & Cooling Systems Analysis
- Data Center Commissioning
- Network Operating Center (NOC) Design Services
- Data Center Design – KVM & Serial / Remote Access Systems Design
- Data Center Monitoring & Control
- Data Center Maintenance (DCMMS)
- Managed Services – Outsourced IT & Facility Solutions
