Page 22 - Q4_2022 Rosendin Corporate Newsletter

REDUNDANCY AND

RESILIENCY DRIVE

DATA CENTER DESIGN

By Kerry Smith (Reprinted from ENR California August 22/29 2022)

pecialty contractors responsible for engineering data centers

consider the back-up power system the “pacemaker” of these

Smission-critical spaces.

Jacobs Mission Critical Global Technology Leader piping and in the electrical infrastructure, as well
Ken Kutsmeda has led the construction of more as water storage tanks within the cooling system,
than 1 million sq ft of data centers, adapting the should public water loss occur.”
latest technologies to electrical systems design
In years past, the redundancy strategy for these
for mission-critical facilities worldwide. “Data
centers are meant to operate 24/7…they can’t facilities was to back up IT and cooling through
alarge, paralleled back-up power generation
have downtime,” Kutsmeda says. “Their systems
must be designed with redundancy and resiliency system. These days, Kutsmeda says, many
so that concurrent maintenance can be performed hyper-scalers, such as Amazon, Microsoft and
Google, are engineering redundancy at the
without shutting down the data center, and to
ensure continuous operation if one part of a IT level to protect from outages while also
engineering power back-up for the network.
system fails.”
“One configuration is providing back-up power in
Nearly every piece of mechanical, electrical smaller individual power trains,” he says, “pairing
and plumbing (MEP) equipment—the a generator with a transformer and UPS system so
generator,transformer, uninterrupted power they can be easily phased with construction.”
supply (UPS) feeding each server rack, power
A current, growing trend, Kutsmeda adds, is
distribution unit (PDU), chiller, pump and fan—has
at least one redundant component. Kutsmeda sustainability and carbon emissions-free back-up
notes, “There’s also redundancy in the mechanical power generation that replaces the carbon-based

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