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Since its establishment in 1967, Algonquin College of Applied Arts and Technology has been a leader in Canadian post-secondary education. The Polytechnic Institute offers more than 350 programs of study, from diplomas in aircraft maintenance and dental hygiene, to advanced diplomas in cybersecurity and applied museum studies, to 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.
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 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 important, Algonquin required UPSs capable of carrying its loads while backup 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 an outage impacts our main data center, it can cause major corruption of databases, application outages, phone systems outages, and remote campus and office outages.”
To help ensure that learning opportunities happen by the books ── 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 center on the Ottawa campus, each remote campus supports a mini data center, where critical resources are served locally with independent internet access and backhaul to the main data center for additional resources and backup connections. Meanwhile, the college’s remote offices connect to the closest campus location to provide their resources.
Algonquin’s primary data center 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 centers, core networking gear, servers, security appliances, distribution nodes, phone systems and security endpoints. The less critical power requirements of the remote offices, meanwhile, are addressed with the compact Eaton 5P and 9PX rackmount UPSs.
The college chose to standardize on Eaton 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 a 93 percent in normal mode. “Efficiency is a huge thing for us, as is availability,” Albers emphasizes. “These are all things we never have to worry about, thanks to Eaton.”
The college’s ability to accommodate changing power requirements has been another advantage provided by 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 as we need to supply more power, we can do so.”
The college has also deployed Eaton Managed rack PDUs in critical remote locations, which enable monitoring and control of critical factors such as voltage, current and power factor.
Algonquin relies on Eaton 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. Prior to deploying IPM, for example, 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 analyze all involved devices to less than 10 minutes.”
Beyond the exceptional product line, Eaton’s UPS Services team was another key factor when Algonquin was selecting a power protection provider. The college maximizes the performance and reliability of its UPS components through preventive maintenance and regularly scheduled service calls. In addition, Algonquin has peace of mind 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 responded, sourced replacement parts and returned the UPS to service.
“Whenever I need our local technicians, they are usually on site the same business day,” Albers says. “I never have a problem getting support.”
“When we engage with Eaton for emergency service, the time from incident to resolution is hours, compared to days 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 evergreening of the power protection solution within its main data center, 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 install date. The new design is looking to maintain the same capabilities in either the same N+2 or potentially the 2N+1 configuration, utilizing 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 another support that Eaton and their partners help us with on a regular basis,” Albers says.
