PowerStruXure drives UPS in a different direction

US vendor APC aims to save space and cut costs with its modular uninterruptible power supply system.

The only time that some end users and resellers think about UPS is when they are waiting for a brown van to turn up with an important parcel.

But when the lights go out and the data centre goes down, some bright spark usually pipes up: "I suppose we've got back-up?"

Server and data centre downtime may have been tolerated in the past but, in today's 24-hour internet economy, downtime means money lost and is totally unacceptable.

One IT manager jokingly told vnunet.com's sister title Computer Reseller News recently that if someone was on fire in the data centre, he'd rather let that person burn to death than explain to his bosses why he took down the servers by hitting the emergency power off switch.

Although many data centres have had uninterruptible power supply (UPS) solutions for some time, these have tended to be big, cumbersome beasts that devour large sections of the data centre.

Additionally, some customers have devoted a lot of expensive real estate to house battery rooms to ensure that systems remain up.

These big systems have not been much of a channel sell because of their complexity and cost.

Together with computer room air-conditioning units and circuit breakers, UPS systems for data centres have taken up valuable space, limiting users' ability to install more servers.

To address the space problem and offer users a better return on investment, UPS manufacturer American Power Conversion (APC) has adopted a different approach to data centre UPS solutions with PowerStruXure (PSX), its rack-based, modular and scalable system.

The company is also hoping to move its resellers up the food chain so that they can sell these bigger-ticket and higher-margin products.

Aaron Davis, vice president of worldwide marketing at APC, said: "Although resellers like selling small power back-up, they have to sell a lot. PSX offers high margin with a high selling point."

The 'pay-as-you-grow' architecture also gets resellers into the sale earlier because they are involved in the planning of a data centre.

Davis explained that, if resellers are not currently selling infrastructure, it is a good way to "diversify business".

Citing Dell as an example of how a vendor can move into the high end, Davis said that 30 per cent of revenue from high-end systems comes from service contracts.

The new system will give value-added resellers (Vars) an opportunity to build in more service revenue to their books.

Davis admitted that one of the biggest challenges facing APC is to educate end users and the channel about the benefits of PSX. The company will tour European cities in the first quarter of next year to tell resellers about its latest offering.

Although APC has a wide portfolio that encompasses racks and enclosures, air solutions, and file-server UPS systems, the channel is more familiar with its brand in the desktop, workgroup and SME space for PC and networking UPS systems.

But after some research into the market and internal navel-gazing to see how it could make best use of products such as its racks and air-conditioning units, APC introduced its PSX range earlier this year.

According to Davis, there is always a fine balance when designing data centres. Too much capacity will inevitably earn a rap over the knuckles from the financial director.

Achieve under capacity and, in the words of the same IT manager who spoke to CRN about emergency power off switches, "you may be praying for a quick and painless death".

Most companies have tended towards oversized data centres that cost millions in wastage. APC estimates, for example, that a 10-year total cost of ownership (capital expenditure plus operating expenditure) saving for a 'right-sized' system rather than a legacy 500KVA system could be as much as $462,721 against an outlay of $1,113,811.

This opportunity could become more important as financial pressures force IT managers to cut back on IT spending and think about smarter ways of planning data centres. APC researched more than 500 facilities and IT end users to see what constraints they had when designing a data centre.

It marshalled these constraints into five areas:

Lifecycle costs
APC found that end users need to optimise investment and available space. Speed of deployment is also a crucial issue, as is the need to lower the cost of service contracts.

Adaptability/scalability
APC looked at how it could reduce engineering requirements for installations, plan for power density increases, manage branch circuits and cope with the increasing number of circuit breakers.

Availability
IT managers need to minimise human errors such as hitting the power off switch, minimise points of failure between UPS and critical load, and reduce simultaneous failure points.

Manageability
End-users need to implement a managed outlet strategy, provide power attributes at rack level and provide predictive failure analysis.

Serviceability
APC found that users need to decrease mean time to repair and reduce the complexity of their systems.

APC used this research to design the PSX system's oversized racks. These aim to reduce cable 'spaghetti' at the back and improve air flow.

The system includes its own air and power distribution units and environmental monitoring units. APC has also included power and data cable routing brackets to tidy up wires and eliminate hot spots.

With a modular and scalable architecture, customers can add UPS power distribution as and when they add more servers. APC estimates that the rack-based systems can also save 35 per cent in space.

The system comes in three versions, A, B and C, to suit different sizes of data centre. And because air distribution units are fitted into the racks, end users do not have to raise floors for cooling.

James Governor, an analyst at Illuminata, said: "Anything that saves space in data centres and networks operations centres is hot right now.

"If blades can sell in this economy, there must be something to the value proposition. It makes a great deal of sense for the UPS to be rack-mounted too."

In the UK, Richard Cutler, partner manager of vendor alliances at system and services integrator Computacenter, explained that his company is evaluating the product and is starting to see client interest.

"PSX does demonstrate a step forward in addressing the power protection needs of both today's and future enterprise clients," he said.

"It provides a real opportunity for the channel to develop solutions in an often overlooked 'IT' aspect of data centre implementation.

"It will be interesting to see how this concept affects the stage of designing the data centre, as power protection is typically determined in advance of IT deployment. PSX brings the two elements into the same equation."

Cutler believes that the modular nature of the architecture has key benefits. As well as releasing up-front capital expenditure and space, it brings the solution much closer to the IT infrastructure it is designed to support.

The ability to upsize the system easily also means that PSX complements Computacenter's Enterprise Infrastructure capabilities, providing another key value-add aspect.

"By utilising resources such as the [Computacenter] Solution Centre, we are able to incorporate into a broader data centre environment, providing proof of concept where required," said Cutler.

Although other manufacturers have modular rack-mount offerings, he thinks that APC's approach appears to be the most comprehensive.

With add-on smart technologies, such as proactive monitoring, the rack design helps support teams to intervene prior to system failure.

Although APC's strategy appears to be closely aligned to the IT channel, Cutler said: "APC will have to work closely with its partners to capitalise on it's success in the workgroup UPS market, where its reputation has been built."

Gavin Banks, regional distribution manager for rival UPS manufacturer Liebert Hiross, maintained that the system is not unique in its scalability, but admitted that the rack-mounted design is a differentiation.

But, although Liebert uses the channel for SME and workgroup solutions, Banks questioned the ability of the channel to sell into the data centre space. "Scalable UPS beyond 30KVA doesn't necessarily suit the channel," he said.

Liebert usually engages consultants for these systems because they may need to look at structural issues, such as the data centre's ability to support weight. These big systems are also "not the type of product you can put in a distributor's warehouse", according to Banks.

Eisen Chok, vice president of sales and customer service at UPS maker PowerKinetics, added: "At first glance, it certainly looks a neat system.

"[But] although it has similar characteristics and features to PowerKinetics' PowerReactor3 system, APC's new UPS falls short of true redundancy as the entire system depends on only two main cabinet controller boards: the main intelligent module and the redundant intelligent module."

Chok claimed that the PowerKinetics system has its own dedicated controller for each power module, so there is no dependency on any cabinet controller.

This means that the cabinet is failsafe, he said. The more power modules, the higher redundancy the customer gets.

"In our opinion, to be truly redundant and modular for power-on-demand infrastructure, the above criteria must be met by the UPS," Chok said.