Rob> I am working on a brand new IT room for around 4 high (12kw?) Rob> power racks and 2 wiring racks. I was talking to the obvious Rob> choice - Liebert - and they came back with a fairly eye watering Rob> quote that made me question whether they are the only game in Rob> town. During my research I fell across two companies - Rittal Rob> for cooling and Rittal's rebadge of Eaton technologies Powerware Rob> line of UPSes.
Not sure about cooling alternatives, since we use Liebert at work I can comment on them. They suck in terms of consumables. In the 5 years I've been here, we've had to replace the dehumidifier bottles twice in each 10 ton unit. And it's not covered under our Maint contract. Go figure. Plus some other minor issues at times. At least I can monitor them (sorta) via SNMP. Newer units will probably be better. Now for large UPSes, you can also look at APC (http://www.apcc.com) or Toshiba (http://www.tic.toshiba.com) also sells units here in the US. I know because I've got a pair of Toshiba 4100 series in my server room. :] Again, the SNMP/Web interface on these 5+ year old units isn't the best, but they've worked just fine. The key with a UPS is to keep the loads balanced across them, and to have an easy way (if possible) to move loads. And if you can, run as much of your gear a 240V instead of 120V as well. Another issue you don't talk about is your runtime requirements. The amount of UPS needed to run your data center, *PLUS* the HVAC, is going to be huge in terms of battery cabinets and numbers of batteries. Are you on the ground floor or not? Have you made sure your floor is strong enough for the loads you're going to be putting on them. Those four big racks could get quite heavy and be over the 100/200lbs /sq ft that commercial buildings are designed for. We had to have extra steel installed for our serverand battery rooms. We've also got a generator, so our UPS doesn't do HVAC at all, they just die when the power goes out, and startup again (staggered by 1-2 minutes I think) once they get power again. UPS is sized for < 20 minutes, because if the generator doesn't start and sync up in < 60 seconds, we're going to have a bad day no matter how much battery capacity we have. And yes, we made the cost tradeoff that the risk of having systems crap out in strange cases is ok. We actually ran into this problem with our trandfer switch, which changed UPS power input from Street to Generator. Sometimes, not always, but sometimes (and always on holidays when a damn rat would get fried in the bus bars on the street...) one of the three phases wouldn't flip over. UPS only sees two out of three good phases, won't accept input, batteries die, systems crash, alarms go off, etc. No fun. Now we do monthly tests of the transfer switch (after getting it replaced and all kinds of other testing hassles outside of normal hours and weren't they fun!) once a month, along with weekly generator tests. Rob> On the power side, the Eaton Powerware 9390 Rob> (http://powerquality.eaton.com/Products-services/Backup-Power-UPS/9390.aspx) Rob> looks like a reasonable competitor to the Liebert NX UPS. Beyond Rob> that I have zero opinion on it. It seems like a good tool to Rob> beat Liebert over the head on pricing, but the reseller claims it Rob> is more efficient/moderner/betterer so maybe it is worth taking Rob> seriously. Curious to know if anyone has nice things to say Rob> about them. In any case, in terms of HVAC units, make sure they specify in *detail* what the lifetimes are of the dehumidifier bottles on the Liebert units, and what's covered under your normal maint contract. I think they were around $1500 to replace each time, with T&M. Oh yeah, make sure you have nice clean water, or insist on filters being installed on your AC units. Include those into your maint agreement as well. Batters need to get tested every year and probably swapped every three to four years as part of normal maint. Yet another cost to think about. And get a generator if you can. :] Which of course costs in terms of fuel and maint (oil changes, etc). It's not cheap. But cheaper than lots and lots and lots of batteries, since our generator can run for days if need be. John _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
