The BladeRoom System - Data Centre Design

The BladeRoom system is infinitely scalable - meaning you can increase capacity rapidly in line with your business growth and deploy new data centres or expand existing sites in record time.

Primary and back-up cooling systems within the Air Optimiser

The cooling systems both primary and back-up, use ambient and evaporative cooling for up to 100% of the time (depending on the climate) - maximising efficiency - with full capacity N+1 back-up mechanical DX cooling to ensure compliance with the Uptime Institute Tier 3 requirements. Tier 4 can be achieved by doubling up the primary and back up cooling system.

The BladeRoom System is hugely scalable and flexible as this slideshow demonstrates

The BladeRoom system has a 60-year design life and is structurally capable of multi-storey configuration without the need for additional strengthening.

It is designed in accordance with the most demanding international standards - and compliant with BS, ISO and IEC amongst other standards.

The BladeRoom factory is a large, modern spotlessly clean environment where best practice methods are employed to ensure a safe, efficient and timely production system.

Visits to the BladeRoom factory are encouraged and you are invited to view the production of your data centres as they are assembled. You will be able to check the quality throughout the process and take comfort that your project timescales are going to be met.

If you are not able to visit during production all is not lost as we will send you weekly visual live step by step photo updates of your data centre being built.

The design of the BladeRoom system was based around some simple guiding principles:

1. to extract maximum heat from IT
2. to deploy mechanical cooling rarely, and
3. to use filtered ambient air and evaporative cooling to achieve 99+% free air cooling.

The BladeRoom system has been designed around the ventilation requirements to achieve maximum efficiency. Air is delivered seamlessly to where it is needed through the normal working corridors so ductwork and raised floors are not required. National, European and International patents pending cover this unique and important development.

Rather than re-circulating and cooling the hot air from the IT as with traditional data centre cooling, a BladeRoom data centre operates like a server by drawing in highly filtered fresh air, intelligently matching air supply to IT demand and exhausting hot air entirely from the data centre as required.

Evaporative and free cooling enables the IT equipment to be cooled with supply air temperatures of between 18C and 24C for more than 99% of the year without the need for mechanical cooling across a range of IT loads, still performing efficiently at 15% utilisation of racks.

The back-up mechanical cooling system is only used for emergencies and for partial cooling during extreme weather conditions and is designed to cool 100% of the IT load.

The climate emulator tested the BladeRoom system in temperatures up to 48C

The whole data centre cooling design was initially developed using detailed CFD modelling. Once satisfied and international patents filed, we built the first BladeRoom system configuration. To test its efficiency we invested in designing and building a Climate Emulator.

The Climate Emulator enabled us to produce enormous volumes of fresh air at a temperature and humidity range that can mimic any location in the world and supply it to the air intake of the BladeRoom.

The Air Optimiser cools the servers primarily using fresh air and evaporative cooling

Inside the BladeRoom we used heat emulators to match the true power and heat demands of 120 racks filled with modern servers as closely as possible.

Using 240kW of heat emulators, we were able over several weeks to prove beyond any doubt the true energy consumption of the BladeRoom system. Varying IT loads were tested through the entire climatic range from -5C to +48C at 5% to 100% RH, consistently delivering impressively low PUE readings.

Initially we tested 2kW per rack in 4 aisles of 30 racks per aisle. Then, by redistributing the heat emulators we were able to increase the heat loads in any given aisle to demonstrate high density cooling levels.

Testing with 24kW/rack

The final phase of the tests involved the entire load being condensed into 10 racks in one IT room delivering 24kW per rack. The BladeRoom system progressively redistributed the cooling load where required responding to the changing load when the heat emulators were moved between IT rooms.

The BladeRoom System has been proven to comfortably deliver in excess of 24kW per rack of IT with 100% free cooling, even with external temperatures in excess of 40°C; something that had not previously been achieved.

The mechanical and electrical design of the BladeRoom system was developed in conjunction with Red Engineering, world leading M&E specialists in the design of resilient data centres;

UK's first Uptime Institute Accredited Tier Designers
Europe's first and only Uptime Institute Tier III certified facility
Europe's first and only Uptime Institute Tier IV certified design

Dedicated power management room

Sites developed using the BladeRoom system are divided into a number of electrical zones, each with it's own dedicated power management room.

Electrical distribution for a 464kW Tier 3 BladeRoom zone with 5 IT rooms

Small sites may have only a single power management room, whereas large installations will contain many zones, allowing low, medium and high density areas or areas with different levels of resilience.

UPS supplies from the primary electrical infrastructure can enter the power management room through a dedicated service hatch in the floor, meaning all services can be securely buried underground in ducts with nothing left exposed. Alternatively, if the data centre inside an existing building, mains services can be brought in at high level through dedicated fireproof service ways.

Each power management room contains 2 x Form 4 Type 6 switchboards into which the A and B UPS supplies are terminated.

Dual busbars are provided along the length of the hot corridor with tap-off units to each of the A and B busbars located in the hot aisles at the back of the racks.

Tap off unit being fitted on a hot aisle busbar

The A and B busbars in each hot aisle accept tap off units at any point along their length that connect to rack mounted power strips. This allows complete flexibility of IT power across the racks, with high, medium and low power racks able to be located anywhere in each rack row.

If the BladeRoom facility is delivered to site with racks already fitted, tap off units and rack mounted power strips can be installed and commissioned in the factory making racks powered and IT-ready upon arrival to site.

Lighting and small power outlets as well as containment are all provided.

The factory production process has many advantages over traditional data centre construction - reducing risk, providing fixed cost certainty and controlling the environment in which to assemble and commission high specification mission-critical data centres.

Our modular data centre construction process allows us to quickly build data centres to a consistent specification, producing very large data centre facilities in short timeframes.

Full BMS testing in the factory

Data centre construction takes place in a brightly lit, dust free environment, spacious enough to allow the in situ testing and commissioning of BladeRoom data centres.

Quality control is improved as electrical systems, BMS, fire and cooling systems are comprehensively tested in the factory before the BladeRoom data centre is delivered to site for final connections and further testing to ensure optimal operation.

Data centre construction in the BladeRoom factory

Totally unaffected by the elements, scrupulously clean and manned by a consistent and experienced labour force, the factory is an ideal environment in which to build critical IT facilities. This helps to reduce the risk associated with traditional data centre construction and fit out through partial factory commissioning and services/control system testing.

Constructed from specially designed and manufactured steel frames, the modules allow generous space for wide corridors, high ceilings and unparalleled engineering and maintenance access.

In addition to the 'traditional construction' attributes of robustness, space and multi-storey capability, a BladeRoom data centre can flex in size when required and is relocatable when necessary.

BladeRoom modular data centres are fully compliant with building regulations with an inherent structural capability that allows multiple storeys or more and has extremely high insulation values.

The BladeRoom system offers you a fast-track programme to acquire new data centre capacity, operational in only a fraction of the time it takes to build traditionally.

Programme compression is possible because the off site production methodology allows all site and enabling works to take place concurrently with the production of the data centre in the factory.

Comparison BladeRoom and traditional approach - Delivering a 500kW data centre

The speed of the programme, coupled with the inherent scalability of the design are key reasons that the BladeRoom system offers fast procurement cycles and the provision of 'just in time' data centres.

A comprehensive blanking system is delivered with the BladeRoom whether we supply the racks or not.

Blanks are available for both 'u' slots within the racks and full-size rack panels to maintain air separation if racks are absent. This allows you to go live immediately with as few or as many racks as you wish to install.

By removing the BladeRoom full rack blanking panels, you then populate each BladeRoom IT aisle with your own racks or cabinets as demand grows.

Data centre options can be added as required.