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Since its establishment in 1967, the Algonquin College of Applied Arts and Technology has been a leader in Canadian post-secondary education. The polytechnic institute offers more than 350 programmes of study, from diplomas in aircraft maintenance and dental hygiene to advanced diplomas in cybersecurity and applied museum studies, and bachelor’s degrees in public safety, automation and robotics. Algonquin supports nearly 20,000 full-time students and more than 25,000 in continuing education on its main campus in Ottawa, Ontario as well as two remote campuses in Pembroke and Perth, plus five satellite office locations.
Read how the college used Eaton solutions to achieve high availability and maintain continuous, clean power to all connected equipment.
Dedication to student success is Algonquin College’s guiding principle ─ one that is demonstrated through the quality of its programmes and staff, continual expansion of facilities and ongoing strategic partnerships. As one of its key partners over the past several decades, Eaton has helped the college to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to uptime.
Algonquin’s greatest challenge is ensuring that all critical equipment, applications and services remain available to students and staff at all times. To begin with, the college required online uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs) that could constantly adjust the incoming power delivered by the local utilities. “In the event that there is a spike or dip, the UPSs clean the power, protecting our equipment”, explains Shane Albers, one of the college’s network technicians.
Equally importantly, Algonquin required UPSs capable of carrying its loads while back-up generators power on during a loss of electricity, which generally takes a couple of minutes. “In the majority of cases, we aim to hold the load with the UPS for 45 minutes, in case the generator fails and a replacement needs to be sourced”, Albers says.
"Downtime for the college results in the interruption of learning and education, on and off campus. And if a power cut affects our main data centre, it can cause major corruption of databases, application outages, phone systems outages and remote campus or office power cuts.”
To help ensure that learning opportunities are carried out by the book ─ with applications and services remaining available to students and staff at all times ─ Algonquin opted to deploy a broad range of Eaton UPSs across its multiple locations. In addition to the main data centre on the Ottawa campus, each remote campus supports a mini data centre where critical resources are served locally with independent Internet access, and they backhaul to the main data centre for additional resources and back-up connections. Meanwhile, the college’s remote offices connect to the closest campus location to provide their resources.
Algonquin’s primary data centre operates three 80 kVA Eaton 9390 UPSs in parallel with an accompanying battery cabinet, while Eaton 9PXM and 9355 units ranging from 4000 VA to 20 kVA safeguard other essential equipment, including remote data centres, core networking gear, servers, security appliances, distribution nodes, phone systems and security endpoints. At the same time, the less critical power requirements of the remote offices are addressed with the compact Eaton 5P and 9PX rack-mount UPSs.
The college chose to standardise with the Eaton brand for a variety of reasons. In addition to desiring the highest level of reliability, Algonquin sought UPSs offering exceptional efficiency. The double-conversion online 9PX is the most efficient UPS in its class, achieving up to 93% in normal mode. “Efficiency is a huge thing for us, as is availability”, Albers emphasises. “These are all things that we never have to worry about, thanks to Eaton.”
The college’s ability to accommodate changing power requirements has been another advantage of partnering with Eaton. Supporting scalability through the addition of building-block power modules, Algonquin is able to easily expand capacity, add a UPS in parallel to the existing installation or add a new UPS system and transfer the load to it.
“Thanks to the modularity of the UPSs, as the campus continues to grow and we need to supply more power, we can do exactly that.”
The college has also deployed Eaton’s managed rack PDUs in critical remote locations, which enable monitoring and control of critical factors such as voltage, current and power.
Algonquin relies on Eaton’s Intelligent Power Manager (IPM) software, which provides the tools needed to monitor and manage power devices in both its physical and virtual environments. “We use IPM as a single pane of glass to manage our fleet of Eaton products”, Albers says, noting that the software has simplified numerous processes for the college. For example, prior to deploying IPM, Algonquin’s IT personnel had to manually access every network card on 40-plus devices during any power event. Now the entire network can be viewed on one screen.
“IPM has changed our response time to power incidents from up to an hour needed to analyse all involved devices to less than 10 minutes.”
Beyond the exceptional product line, Eaton’s UPS Services team was another key factor for Algonquin when selecting a power protection provider. The college maximises the performance and reliability of its UPS components through preventive maintenance and regularly scheduled service calls. In addition, Algonquin has peace of mind in knowing that Eaton’s highly trained technicians will respond promptly to any emergency. In one instance, Albers reveals that a UPS absorbed a major voltage increase of approximately 400%, according to software logs. While the massive jolt damaged the UPS, the attached equipment remained protected because the college was able to bypass the UPS. Within three hours, local Eaton service technicians had responded, sourced replacement parts and returned the UPS to service.
“Whenever I need our local technicians, they are usually on site the same working day”, Albers says. “I never have a problem getting support.”
“When we contact Eaton for emergency service, the time taken from incident to resolution is measured in hours, not days, in comparison with the competition. This is a key factor in our continued relationship with Eaton.”
Most recently, Algonquin turned to Eaton for help in planning the renewal of the power protection solution within its main data centre, a trio of 80 kVA 9390 units operating in a parallel N+2 configuration. “We are planning a complete replacement of our biggest electrical component,” Albers says. “Due to the complexity and criticality, we are starting the process of inspection, design and planning two years in advance of our intended installation date. The new design is looking to maintain the same capabilities in either the same N+2 or potentially the 2N+1 configuration, using Eaton’s most advanced units while also reducing the current footprint if possible.”
To kick off the planning process, Algonquin has scheduled an on-site inspection with the lead support technician at Potencia Technologies, Eaton’s PowerAdvantage partner, and the firm’s electrician. “This is yet more support that Eaton and their partners provide us with on a regular basis”, Albers says.
