Innovation and integration: bespoke

CUSTODIAN DATA CENTRE, winner of the Data Centre Leaders Awards ‘Green’ category, designed its data centre with the highest environmental efficiencies in mind.

Partnership approach
Working in direct partnership, Airedale designed and built an intelligent, energy efficient data centre cooling solution that significantly reduces the need for mechanical cooling and provides fresh air free cooling up to 80% of the year.

Airedale was selected for its ability to design and integrate control logic across multiple protocols, hardware and systems and for its pioneering free cooling technology and high specification chillers.
With a system using direct fresh air in a data centre cooling environment, Airedale software is also critical in ensuring temperature set point and humidity are maintained. Airedale’s solution effectively controls the Air Handling Units (AHUs), Airedale free cooling chillers and legacy Building Management System (BMS).

Bespoke solution
The AHU dampers are controlled by Airedale’s bespoke control logic to maximise the effect of free cooling even when the outside temperature is above the supply air set point. When required, two external Airedale mechanical cooling chillers provide cold water to coils in the AHUs. Chillers are programmed to operate with a dynamic chilled water temperature set point, ensuring water is provided at the optimum temperature required by the system and allowing free cooling whenever the ambient is below the return water temperature.

Airedale’s ACIS™ control system manages temperature and humidity in the data centre, with each control panel integrating with Custodian’s BMS to provide 24/7 monitoring. PUE figures below 1.15 are regularly achieved, meaning that for every 1kW of power used by equipment hosted in the data centre, 0.15kW of power is required to operate all related areas of infrastructure.

Scalable by design
The collaborative approach resulted in a scalable solution, with infrastructure and pipework installed at the start allowing further air handling and chiller units to be added with minimum disruption and without incurring unnecessary additional cost as data centre demand grows.

Performance from day one
Airedale’s dedicated commissioning and critical service solution ensures the system performed from day one and provides round-the-clock support and quarterly preventative maintenance to ensure optimum system performance.
Airedale solution
2 x 30 to 450kW Ultima™ Compact super quiet chillers
1 x 75 to 450kW Ultima™ Compact FreeCool chiller
Design and integration of industry standard SNMP protocol
controls and ACIS™ software to systems and proprietary BMS
Airedale commissioning, critical service and preventative
maintenance solution

Benefits
Fresh air free cooling 80% of the year minimises carbon footprint
Achievable PUE of < 1.15 (ratio of total facility power usage divided
by IT equipment power usage)
Constant temperature, humidity and leak detection monitoring,
generating real-time SMS/email/pager updates
Full N+1 redundancy
Scalable bespoke solution
Meeting growth demands
Bytemark Hosting provides a comprehensive managed hosting service to a portfolio of prestigious clients including the Cabinet Office, Carling.com and Médecins sans Frontières.Supplementing its existing network spread over Manchester and London, Bytemark built a new 250 square metre £650,000 data centre facility within the warehouse space of its new property in York.

Precise cooling capability
Working in conjunction with Sudlows, Airedale’s SmartCool™ DX PAC units were specially adapted to provide direct fresh air free cooling for up to 90% of the year and deliver N+1 redundancy. A fresh air mixing box was also specially designed for the project.

Two Airedale EasiCool™ PAC units in the UPS room provide N+1 run standby.
The high efficiency PAC units were chosen for their ability to deliver extremely precise control of temperature and air quality, and to provide a resilient but scalable solution.
Seamless control of building services
From a touchscreen graphical application, Airedale ACIS™ software monitors the cooling plant, manages air pressure within the data centre, triggers alarms and, in the event of fire, will automatically shut down the fresh air supply.

The ACIS™ system controls the following:
Airedale data centre PAC units and fresh air supply units
UPS room cooling
Fire suppression and VESDA system alarms
Energy monitoring of LV system and power meters
Air extractor system
External generator
Office air conditioning controls

The results
The Airedale solution provides an energy efficient data centre that maximises free cooling opportunities, achieving PUE levels of 1.1 to 1.2. Initial cooling capacity equates to 90kW with N+1 redundancy, expandable to 450kW N+1 to allow for growth of the data centre.

Airedale solution
2 x 90kW Airedale SmartCool™ DX precision air conditioning (PAC)
units (data centre) provide fresh air free cooling for up to 90% of
the year and excellent part-load performance from staged cooling
2 x 11kW Airedale EasiCool™ PAC units (UPS room) provide stable
support where load conditions are typically fluctuating
ACIS™ Building Management System (BMS) provides remote
monitoring of cooling and other building services from an easy-to-
use graphical environment
Airedale commissioning and on-going preventative maintenance,
spares & service

Benefits
SmartCool™ and EasiCool™ units reduce operating costs by switching to the best operating mode, irrespective of whether the data centre is underpopulated or density and heat loads are increasing
Annualised PUE of 1.1 to 1.2 (load dependent)
Resilient solutions providing N+1 redundancy
Seamless solution from Airedale’s multidisciplinary team
;encompassing design, integration and on-going management
Peter Taphouse, Operations Director and Co-Founder of Bytemark Hosting comments: “Airedale’s innovative and integrated solution means we can make the most of the fresh air cooling opportunities in our York location. This means we can achieve a much more efficient data centre and reduce our costs, as well as the impact on the environment.”