Greater Access to Info Across 22 Data Centers

5 min video  /  2 minute read
 

Project Scope

  • More than 1 million tags
  • More than 100,000 alarm tags
  • 22 projects serving hundreds of clients
  • Hub and Spoke Architecture
  • Trillions of historical data points over the last year

Project Overview

This project was a colocation data center HMI for electrical power distribution, thermal management and capacity planning. It provides navigation, equipment detail, history, trending, notifications and alarms. Data centers require thousands of pieces of supporting equipment to provide hundreds of different operating metrics within specialized specifications. Power consumption, availability, temperature, humidity, and space require constant monitoring. Deviations from the specifications can lead to lost revenue in the forms of damaged equipment, increased staffing, service level agreement refunds and lost customers.

Ignition has allowed Casne to provide these standardized solutions to all 22 data centers in the portfolio:

Local access and standardized navigation: Using Ignition’s navigation component, Casne provided a standard, easy-to-use, spoke-and-hub system. This allows for a navigation system that is identical across all sites, reducing the need for multiple Subject Matter Experts, allowing the customer’s users to easily get to the data they need.

Graphical Equipment Detail screens: Detailed information is easily available to remote operators, allowing for data collection and trend analysis. Data is presented in identical graphical representation of the field device, allowing field operators to view data in a familiar form.

Third-Party Integration: Integration into the client’s Customer Portal has allowed Casne to match operational data with sales data. Operations can maintain equipment capacity to ensure proper operation of the system while the sales division is able to trend and predict future sales needs.

Event Notifications: Out-of-spec event notifications allow for immediate problem management. Emails can be delivered to multiple pipelines to ensure the right team is getting the event notifications — reducing the number of nuisance events.

The combination of features has reduced the need for lengthy manual data-collection periods, freeing up time to increase the business and perform preventative maintenance. Out-of-specification situations have been reduced as personnel now can trend and see possible situations before they become spec violations.

Data has become available to multiple verticals, eliminating the cross efforts required to deliver information from one department to another. This allows for Operations to concentrate on maintaining the data center.

Colocation data centers are ever-expanding. New sites and new equipment are always being deployed. Ignition allows for a fast and standard way to collect and integrate the data, making it readily available to the Operations team.


Project Information

Created By:   Casne Engineering

Casne provides engineering services for major utilities, process industries, and critical facilities. Casne offers a team of capable engineers who develop and support engineering solutions using best-of-breed products and technologies.

Website: casne.com

Project For:   Digital Realty Colocation (formerly TELX)

Digital Realty Colocation operates interconnection and colocation data centers nationwide. The company provides high-speed data center interconnectivity, colocation services, dedicated internet access, internet exchange, Remote Hands, and security services for financial, cloud, IT, digital media, healthcare and mobile industries.

Posted on September 1, 2017