Information Systems:Building Power

Overview

uniPHARM uses a generator to provide power in the event of a hydro outage. As the generator requires time to start and become ready, there is a large UPS in the server room that provides the room and select outlets throughout the building with continuous power.

Design

The attached JPG is a diagram of how electric power is organized in the Server room. The rack closest to the door and the middle rack are fed power from the Liebert UPS which filters power from Hydro or in the event of a Hydro failure, the generator. The rack farthest from the door containing the Power8 hardware has 2 different power feeds, one from the Liebert UPS and the other straight from Hydro. The second feed from Hydro plugs into the Power8 UPS at the bottom of that rack. The Power8 rack has each of its 2 feeds of power protected by a UPS so even if 1 UPS fails or drains, the other UPS will still provide electricity so that the Power8 will remain up. The only way that the Power8 system will go down is if both UPS's fail AND we have Hydro AND generator failure. Highly unlikely.

UPS

The main UPS is a Liebert Nfinity unit (12kVA,with max capacity of 20kVA). There is an Eaton (400ish VA) UPS in the rack dedicated to the Power server and its related components (disk enclosure etc.)

The technical support number and account information for Liebert is on the top right side of the UPS.

Support for Liebert UPS
* Support phone number: 1-800-543-2378
* Support phone number (direct): +1-800-222-5877 (ext 2 for Liebert, ext 2 for Geist)
* Device model: Nfinity Power System
* Device serial number: 2316100003AU063


Support for Eaton UPS
* 1-800-356-5737

web page of Liebert UPS

IP:172.30.18.228 Username: administrator Password: NewVisionIT2051!

Zabbix polls this agent via SNMP - both voltage and battery stats can be viewed.

Insights on the future of Liebert UPS

(April 2021) This information originates from a conversation with both a tech support rep and a field agent (Jas) regarding the future of the UPS

• Usually, 15 years is when they advise customers to start planning for a replacement. The Liebert is on its 14th year as of April 2021.
• The Nfinity line of UPS that we have is end of life, but the units are still solid. The replacement product line is Liebert APS.
• The current UPS is a modular, 20kVA-capable unit with 12kVA configured across 4 batteries that are independent of each other (or at least the whole thing is resilient to a 1-2 battery failure).
• Apparently, a possible improvement that could be implemented during replacement (would likely incur additional cost) is to decouple the UPS bypass switch/mechanism from the UPS, to make it easier to switch to hydro. A panel similar to a circuit breaker would be installed, with a large switch that would flip the power to hydro or back through UPS (and then hydro). However, when the agent was on-site, they were able to put the UPS into bypass mode without any interruption (they do this during maintenance visits), so I'm not sure what advantage this new design would have.
• Lithium-ion is starting to be introduced, but is not feasible/available yet for the type of UPS we would be getting. This is bound to change rapidly. The advantage to this is obviously better battery tech and smaller footprint.