State Government transitions to Eaton Power Xpert® solution for new facility

Background

This state government’s data processing center supports multiple departments within the state. In addition to its data processing activities, the center provides after-hours printing services to many departments. The center planed to move to a larger facility, which led the director to analyze the power infrastructure and what they can do to accommodate future growth and expansion.

Challenge

The director of the facility faced three issues that affect his ability to ensure power availability and system reliability. First, different groups add servers, printers and other equipment all the time, and the director needs to know that the power infrastructure can adequately accommodate the load and operate within a redundant configuration. Second, he needs to be sure they don’t overload circuits or UPSs. Finally, he needs to ensure load balancing is occurring. The power is distributed from the UPS system through three distribution breakers. From there, it feeds a variety of servers, printers, and other critical equipment. It was not uncommon for the director to lose track of power usage. By ensuring that the load is balanced across all three phases, he can accommodate new printers and other equipment as they are added.

Solution

The state worked with Eaton to come up with a solution using Power Xpert products that streamlined the monitoring and management of the power equipment through a single interface. The solution enables him to anticipate when they will exceed the acceptable load, and to take action to prevent downtime. They incorporated Power Xpert products, tailored to their specific requirements to work with their existing equipment. This included the Power Xpert Software, Server Core class, with the layout manager, eNotify, a ConnectUPS Web/SNMP card (connecting the Eaton UPSs to their Ethernet network) and an EMINT, an Eaton communications device used to bring the trip units onto the Ethernet network.

Results

The Power Xpert implementation gives the director not only granular-level information about the state of the power infrastructure; it provides the tools to anticipate problems with capacity and load balancing, enabling him to counter downtime potential before it occurs. By allowing new devices to be integrated with no additional cost, and little effort, the state is well-positioned to support its growth without compromising system reliability.