Software company optimizes efficiency with building technology
Buildings IOT
How STACK Infrastructure achieved zero downtime redundancy for high-end data center management
STACK Infrastructure is an award-winning industry leader in building, owning, and operating highly efficient, cost-effective wholesale data centers. Each of its national facilities meets or exceeds the highest industry standards for data centers in all operational categories of availability, security, connectivity, and physical resilience.
STACK offers wholesale and colocation facilities in four markets throughout the United States: San Jose, CA; Hillsboro, OR; Dallas, TX; and Ashburn VA. In Ashburn, an old AOL data center is being transformed into a state-of-the-art wholesale space with 15 MW of premium capacity, 2n+1 redundancy, and more.
What Buildings IOT did
Buildings IOT has been working with STACK Infrastructure for more than 10 years and through three acquisitions. With Phase 1 of Ashburn complete, Buildings IOT connected 12,000 points from control systems in the first 10,000-square-foot data hall plus office space and chiller plant. Each point transmits data to the enterprise command center developed by Buildings IOT and to the backup history servers at five-minute intervals. Critical points transmit at one-minute intervals.
As with most Buildings IOT projects, controls are integrated at Ashburn through an operational technology backbone made of fiber connected through switches and splitters.
Results
Because Ashburn is a fully 2N+1 redundant data center, the integrations in power and cooling systems are also redundant. For example, a primary lighting controller is in constant communication with a redundant lighting controller. If a controller has any interruption, the whole system is smart enough to switch to the redundant system with zero downtime. The secondary controller continues controlling the system and collecting critical data with no interruption.
STACK's energy management dashboard can also be configured to provide hierarchical access to any property or tenant space. For example, executives can easily get a high-level overview of each property, while building engineers can access data from the building they control. STACK tenants also get access to energy usage reports and near-real-time views into their server rack space to aid in data management strategies.
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