Established in 1963, the University of East Anglia is a public research institution on the outskirts of Norwich. It is ranked 27th and 30th in the UK respectively by the prestigious Guardian University Guide 2023 and The Times/Sunday Times Good University Guide 2024, and is renowned for the quality of its research.
Located two miles from the city centre, the university’s 320 acre (120 hectare) campus is home to four faculties and 26 schools of study, with a particular emphasis in the fields of Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences, and Medicine and Health Sciences.
It also features two data centres that house the critical IT infrastructure essential to the university’s day-to-day operations, including servers, storage, networking, and high performance computing.
Nearly 17,000 students, as well as more than 3,500 lecturers, researchers, and support staff, access services digitally, so any disruption to the computer systems or other IT networks could have a catastrophic impact across the campus.
UPS Upgrade Required
The existing UPS systems in the supporting rooms of both data centres had been installed several years ago and the clock was ticking before they would reach their end of service life. One of the systems, in particular, was already prone to failure.
It was time to upgrade the power protection infrastructure, and the university turned to Riello UPS and long-standing authorised reseller and service partner Technical Power & Maintenance (TP&M).
Taking into account the mission-critical nature of the university’s data centres, Riello UPS’s award-winning modular Multi Power range proved the natural choice to upgrade the existing system.
Due to the busy nature of the campus and the fact that the university didn’t want both data centres out of action at the same time, the UPS upgrades were phased.
So to start with, Technical Power & Maintenance replaced the failing UPS system with a pair of 126 kVA Multi Power units for a total power installation of 252 kVA.
Each UPS comprised 3 x 42 kW power modules and 2 x battery cabinets totalling 80 batteries, along with a battery isolator panel, to provide autonomy of more than 1 hour 30 minutes.
Following this successful first phase of the replacement, attention turned to the old UPS in the second data centre.
The three 80 kVA units were upgraded with two 210 kVA Multi Power in N+2 configuration, with each UPS comprising 5 x 42 kW power modules and 120 batteries housed on the existing rack to provide approximately 40 minutes runtime.
Positive Outcome
The project was successfully completed with minimal disruption or risk, and most importantly, with no impact to the university’s services.
The institution are “very happy that the UPSs provided are protecting power, ensuring the university’s data centres are secure. We have successfully completed power failure tests to prove this.”
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