CASE STUDY : Racking Solutions For Your Data Center

Racks play a crucial role in the functioning of the data center is Societe
Generale Software Asia realized when they implemented Rittal's world class
racking solutions in their data center.

This state-of-the-art deve­lop­­ment cum data center located at the
International Technology Park (ITPL) was equipped with top-of-the-line
infrastructure. Societe Generale focuses extensively on deve­loping software
solutions for global investment banking operations. The bank also offers
services in financial software R&D, consultancy, project management and
development. So while Societe Generale was on the lookout for the right kind of
partner who would meet their requirements in the most cost efficient manner.
Bengaluru-based System Integration, Pursuit Technologies came to their rescue.
Pursuit deployed Rittal racking solutions in addition to meeting other
requirements of Societe Gene­rale well within time. This not only helped Societe
Generale by reducing their power consumption and electricity bills extensively,
but also in utilizing the space available for data center more efficiently.

Project requirement

The project that was valued at Rs 1 crore required Pursuit to optimize space
and simul­taneously extend thermal management inside the racks. The client was
also looking for energy efficient cooling solution and security for their
critical servers.

Rittal has been rendering services to Societe Generale since 2004 by
providing racking solution for stacking servers, network switches, patch panels
at data center, communication network room for their facilities in Bengaluru.

Challenges

Pursuit was faced with the challenge of accommodating huge quantities of
servers inside the racks under a single roof with better thermal manage­ment for
high density servers wherein the heat dissipation is too high. In this case, the
company required a racking solution along with high load bearing capacity in the
range of 1,000 to 1,200 kg. Hence, Pursuit offered racks by Rittal with a nine
folded design with CRCA sheet. The racks can bear a load upto 1,200 kg and the
height of the rack was 42U (2,000mm) which is customized as per requirement of
the customer for better optimization of space. The front and rear doors of these
racks are fully perforated. By using this solution, Societe Generale could have
achieved the best thermal management in the data center racks even after housing
high density servers for the entire height of the rack.

Arun Kumar, Director, Pursuit Technologies said, “We had a challenge to build
data center cum development center within an area of 50,000sq ft as there were
more than 100 plus servers to be placed within the center. Besides, they also
wanted the local area network be put in place by us. We supplied HP servers for
setting up their entire development center. We had the critical task of setting
up the entire infrastructure. Rittal racks were chosen as the company is the
only one that offers solutions around thermal management besides extending
in-built cooling system. The company also has an in-built power distribution
unit within the rack that extends intelligent power and load management critical
to the proper functioning of the server.”

A team comprising 15 members from Pursuit Technologies took around three
months to implement and design the entire project. However, there were several
challenges that came in the way of Pursuit Technologies despite the fact that
this was the second occasion when they were implementing a project for Societe
Generale. Apart from Pursuit, there were other contractors including interior
designer, electric contractors who were involved at various roles in the
project. The team from Pursuit had to keep in mind that they were working in
union. Therefore, they had to coordinate at several points like during site
meetings and other planning.

Key learnings

There were number of lessons that the team from Pursuit learnt from the
entire project. Besides, adopting best practices the team also learnt new
techniques around network implementation.

“With every project, we gained a lot of experience and improved on our
skills. We were able to create awareness among our clients that racks play a
crucial role in the designing of an entire data center. By merely providing the
correct amount of area between racks we were able to save enough space and by
paying heed to the designing of the racks we could help our client reduce the
cost of power and achieve higher TCO,”added Kumar.

In Societe Generale's case, Pursuit made use of rack that had split doors at
the rear end. This helped the team to save a lot of space that the servers could
have otherwise occupied within the data center. Using racks that had
perforations in them ensured that the servers were never heated up as there was
smooth air flow within the server racks. If normal rack door would have been
used then each of the racks would have taken more than 900 cm of space. This was
reduced to half by using merely split door racks.

“Since we had a constrained data center space, we sat with the client and
explained to them the benefits of using Rittal racks. We had to place 40 racks
within the given space. Another designs these racks using good quality steel,
which is crucial to the overall functioning of the ser­vers within a data
center, an area where many companies compro­mise,” quipped Kumar.

Customer speaks

By using Rittal's racks, Societe Generale has achieved the optimal
utilization of space in data center and proper thermal management within racks
with perforated doors. Besides racks also came with access control ensuring the
security aspect that is crucial to the functioning of the entire data center as
various critical applications run on these servers. “Pursuit is our long term
technology partners and we have benefited in a number of ways through the
installation of racks and the entire network that they had implemented for our
data center,” mentioned Muralidharan, VP-IT, Societe Generale Software Asia.

Pooja Sharma

(poojas@cybermedia.co.in)