VODAFONE
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“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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