11 January 2022
|
Chris Wellfair of Secure I.T. Environments
Secure I.T. Environments (SITE) has announced the completion of data centre infrastructure upgrades at two hospitals in south west England.
Both projects entailed updating 20-year old data centres, one with new air conditioning systems projected to save £13,684 in annual running costs.
One of the upgrades was to a hospital responsible for many of the NHS Trust's acute services based there, including an emergency department and minor injuries unit. The data centre upgrade was taking place on a live data centre, so great care was taken to minimise the impact on hospital services.
The end of life air conditioning system was replaced with four GEA Multi-Denco energy efficient downflow units in an N+1 configuration. Works took place in a phased approach to ensure the data centre could continue to operate at full capacity. SITE also completed a large power upgrade, which had to be carefully managed as several critical care supplies had to be briefly taken offline as part of the planned switch over.
At the second site, the 20-year old UPS and environmental systems were replaced with a 50kVA/kW modular energy efficient UPS solution, which includes air conditioning to prolong the lifespan of the batteries. All works were completed without shutdown and allowed for a seamless transition between the old and new UPS systems.
The new Jacarta DCIM EMS system ensures there is now EMS continuity across the trust’s three data centre sites with monitoring for UPS, AC fail, water leak detection, fire panels, humidity and temperature. This data is fed into a centralised building monitoring system that the IT team can monitor remotely. No downtime was required for the upgrade.
Chris Wellfair, projects director at SITE, said “Healthcare settings are some of the most challenging environments that we work in. We have built up decades of experience within the NHS sector, which enables us to ensure a minimum impact on patients and staff, and reduce the risks of unplanned downtime.”
