Eaton provides secure power for cinemas’ IT system in Spain and Portugal

CINESA, Spain’s leading cinema operator and a subsidiary of European-wide cinema chain UCI Cinemas, shows around 300 films a year and is committed to continually enhancing customer service and satisfaction, as well as maximising the efficiency of its operations. To ensure a smooth shut-down of sales and ticketing systems in the event of a power failure, CINESA’s IT partner, Onisis, turned to Eaton and its 5PX line-interactive UPSs for help.

Having decided to upgrade the IT systems that support key management and sales functions at its cinemas, CINESA and Onisis carried out a detailed evaluation of the available options. The decision was made to adopt a virtualised solution based on new hardware to provide systems that would be user friendly, robust, flexible and cost effective.

A key challenge, however, was that many CINESA cinemas are located in large commercial centres where it is not possible to rely on consistent mains power quality. And, if the power was to fail while the cinema is open to the public, not only would the showing of films be interrupted, the sales and ticketing systems would also go offline and would be difficult to restart quickly. The existing sales and ticketing systems had no backup systems to protect against power failures and, in some locations, this lack of power protection had already proved to be problematic.

A better solution to these issues was therefore an essential part of the implementation of the new IT systems as experience had shown that unplanned and uncontrolled shutdown of the servers could affect ticket sales for many hours, resulting in substantial loss of revenue.

Onisis strongly recommended the implementation of a robust UPS installation that would not only provide dependable power for the cinemas but also support remote management to ensure that the IT systems were always started up and shut down in a controlled way.

Acting on these recommendations, Onisis was tasked by CINESA with developing and implementing a UPS solution that would provide equipment with remote control and management of the IT equipment and secure close integration with the VMware virtualised IT environment to ensure orderly and controlled starting and shutdown of virtual machines. At each cinema, the UPS installation was also required to support two HP DL380 physical hosts for the virtual machines, one iOmega network attached storage (NAS) disk array, and a range of network equipment that included high-density firewalls, switches and routers.

After carefully analysing these requirements and evaluating various options for meeting them, Onisis chose a solution based on Eaton’s 5PX UPSs rated at 1.5 kVA and fitted with network cards. These units were selected as they combine versatility and value for money with excellent support for virtualised environments and remote management.

The Eaton 5PX UPS enables the virtual machines that form the basis of the CINESA IT systems to be shut-down via Eaton’s Intelligent Power Management software. The vCentre virtualisation management software controls their restarting, meaning that both shut down and restarting are always performed in a way that minimises downtime and eliminates the risk of data loss.

The 1.5kVA rating of the 5PX UPS also means that the supported systems can continue to operate normally for up to five minutes in the absence of mains power. This makes it possible for the IT systems to stay active during short power interruptions with no loss of functionality. After five minutes, the systems are automatically shut down in a controlled manner, with complete shutdown achieved well within the overall UPS runtime. In fact, tests carried out on the systems have shown that the runtime is typically 19 minutes, allowing a substantial margin of safety.

The virtual machines that provide the IT functionality at each cinema – which includes digital signage control, the sales system and office management – are implemented on two physical servers. The arrangement of these servers ensures that one is kept running even if the other fails.

In addition to integrating the management of the UPSs into the existing Nagios monitoring
platform via SNMP, CINESA also takes advantage of the automated email alert facility offered by products in the 5PX range, which allows the UPSs to alert the IT department and the technical maintenance team instantly whenever a power event occurs. This facility has proved particularly useful for recording power cuts that occur outside the operating hours of the cinemas, which might previously have been overlooked.

“The ability of the Eaton 5PX UPSs to integrate closely with virtualised IT platforms and management systems was a key factor in the decision to select them for use in our project” says Richard Fuertes, UCI-Cinesa infrastructure manager, CINESA. “Eaton has provided a solution that is not only reliable, but allows CINESA to remotely manage and control, from a central location, all of the critical functions of its cinemas in Spain and Portugal.”

After a successful pilot phase, the remaining cinemas were installed with Eaton’s 5PX UPSs, between June and November 2013. The implementation was problem free and since commissioning, the equipment has fully lived up to CINESA’s expectations.