VODAFONE
“We’ re always moving from conventional racks to better solutions, either hot aisle or cold aisle containment”
hand against the fan, it really is cold air.
“ Last year we built 10 of the pods in record time – five months to put those up on the floor, tested and running. It was a very high priority project, which we delivered.”
Paul explains that this was the only way Vodafone could have cooled these systems, noting that conventional cooling methods couldn’ t have handled these high kilowatt densities. They now produce the lowest power usage effectiveness( PUE) in Vodafone at 1.2 or lower.
He adds:“ For legacy systems with low kilowatts – only three to five kilowatts max per rack – we use cold aisle containments with under-floor cooling solutions. We can cool that in a normal under-the-floor cooling solution as long as we have doors or roof containment, and that works very well. The room can be 27 degrees and inside the cold aisle part is 23.
“ We’ re always moving from conventional racks to better solutions, either hot aisle or cold aisle containment.”
Full steam ahead to reduce downtime With more demand than ever before, Vodafone is also eager to reduce downtime through redundancy. This is why, during data centre migration, the company keeps its legacy systems running until everything is verified and databases are checked.
“ Only then do we decommission the old systems,” Paul notes.“ Any solution we build, whether hot or cold aisle, has to have an N + 1 configuration with A and B power from different UPSs.”
“ We also have diverse cooling systems. For example, in Ireland, we have both chillers and condensers outside. We mix that water supply: if one fails, the other is okay.”
Vodafone’ s data centre operations in the Republic of Ireland consist of stateof-the-art facilities that hold robust power infrastructure and multiple layers of redundancy to prevent downtime.
In order to support the running of its data centres, Vodafone has been partnered with Kirby Group Engineering for 20 years. Founded in Ireland, Kirby Group Engineering completes leading mechanical and electrical engineering
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