Founded in 2002, E4 specialises in the production of customised high performance computing infrastructures for scientific and research environments as well as data centre solutions for enterprises. The company boasts amongst its customers some of the most prestigious European research centres, including CERN in Geneva, and recently received an award from Italy’s Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (National Institute for Nuclear Physics) for providing top quality hardware solutions.
Amongst its latest data centre solutions for enterprises, E4 has developed E4 VSTONE. With server, storage, network and virtualisation capabilities all integrated into one system, this innovative converged infrastructure offering aims to provide data centres with a simple, flexible and scalable solution. With power protection and management being as vital for virtual machines as they are for physical servers, the company also needed UPS technology that could guarantee power supply continuity, ensure data integrity and integrate easily with VMware’s Vsphere and Microsoft´s HyperV. Another key challenge was to equip E4 VSTONE with a UPS system which offered scalability as well as energy efficiency.
To overcome all of these challenges, E4 turned to Eaton’s virtualisation-ready 9PX UPS. “Thanks to Eaton’s state-of-the-art Intelligent Power™ software bundled with Eaton UPSs, the 9PX UPS is compatible with all major operating systems and virtualisation software and can easily integrate with virtualised IT environments, including Vsphere and HyperV”, explains Daniele Daneluz, IT distribution account manager at Eaton. Intelligent Power Software plugs into virtual machine management systems and integrates power management functions so that users can conveniently and efficiently monitor their entire IT installation, including UPSs and ePDUs, from the same location using the same management pane.
The Intelligent Power software can also be configured to automatically trigger the live migration of virtual machines to a back-up facility, to ensure data integrity, zero downtime and thus guarantee continuity of the entire business.
In addition, E4 chose the 9PX to provide E4 VSTONE’s users with a scalable offering both in terms of power and reliability. Thanks to Eaton’s Powerware HotSync® load-sharing technology, paralleling can be used to gain redundancy and add capacity to the system at a later point depending on the infrastructure growth. In addition, HotSync technology is used to parallel power converter modules within a UPS. HotSync technology also guarantees maximum system availability and reliability by eliminating a single point of failure in a parallel UPS system in which two or more units share the same load. A maintenance bypass is also available for easy replacement of the UPS without powering down critical systems.
Another reason for turning to Eaton was energy efficiency. Offering 95% efficiency in online double conversion mode and 98% in high-efficiency mode as well as a power factor of 0.9, the 9PX delivers 28% more power than other UPSs in the same class, with 40% less energy usage.
Finally, Eaton’s ePDU’s were selected thanks to their patented mounting system which is specifically designed for the data centre environment to provide maximum availability and fit any standard 42U IT rack. By enabling users to monitor and track energy consumption, including accurate volt, amp, watt and kilowatt-hour measurements, the ePDU also contributes to controlling operating costs, giving a comprehensive view of power distribution.
Eaton’s high levels of service and customer support also influenced E4’s decision to equip E4 VSTONE with the 9PX. “Eaton fully supported us in the design of E4 VSTONE as well as in the startup phase, offering us the opportunity to configure and personalise the solution according to our needs”, comments Mr Loris Lignola, E4 Computer Engineering, Enterprise B.U. team leader.
“Thanks to Eaton’s power management solutions, we have succeeded in designing a totally integrated, scalable and fault tolerant offering for private clouds which ensures business continuity – E4 VSTONE. This will offer our customers a great opportunity to save on startup and integration costs whilst ensuring storage integrity and energy savings” – continues Mr Lignola.
Following the success of the E4 VSTONE project, E4 is planning to partner with Eaton again in the future. The company will count on Eaton’s UPSs for future projects involving IT infrastructure and data centres and wherever there is demand for a scalable power supply structure which can be easily integrated.
