Premier Solutions Steps Up

Company Offers New Options For Heat & Power Challenges Data centers are experiencing an evolution in technology that increases efficiency but leaves IT professionals to deal with the issue of escalating heat and power. Premier Solutions wants to help. All-Around Solutions Specializing in data center optimization and maintenance, Premier Solutions (www.premiersolutionsco.com) has seen the IT industry struggle to find answers to the growing power and cooling needs. Bill Montgomery, CEO of Premier Solutions, says it is not about resolving one particular problem. Whenever there is an addition or change to a data center, such as a new blade server, the entire data center needs to be adjusted to accommodate. “Clients are still dealing with power issues,” Montgomery says. “And then security is becoming a big part of it, as well. Once they have the racks and the server cabinets in place, they need to be able to monitor the inside temperature of the cabinet. There have been products out for a long time that monitor the environment. There are fluid detectors, heat and humidity detectors, and that’s becoming more and more popular, as well.” For Montgomery, it used to be that clients would come to him only wanting racks or other hardware. But because data center technology has improved and increased, now Premier Solutions works with clients from start to finish for build-outs, expansions, and other projects. The process begins with the prebuild stage where the company gives two or more recommendations after analyzing the needs. Then it moves to the implementation process. From there, the client isn’t just on its own. Premier Solutions continues to provide support to the client after the data center has been converted. Optimizing infrastructure is the starting point. Montgomery says he has seen more raised floors implemented, along with strategically placed perforated floor panels. The perforated floor panels that bring airflow from the subfloor to the room used be about 200cfm (cubic feet per meter) airflow, Montgomery says, but newer ones are available that give 500cfm. How It’s Done Premier Solutions offers several recommendations and products for its clients’ cooling needs. First is the installation of 1U blanking plates in cabinets. By occupying unused rack space, blanking panels will support proper airflow within an enclosure. Then, it recommends reconfiguring the rows to a hot/cold aisle format, including in-row cooling units for server cabinet rows. A rotation of perforated floor panels into cold aisles of rows is also important, along with a strategic placement of blade servers. Furthermore, Premier Solutions suggests installing top and rear fans into the cabinet panels of new cabinets for HP (www.hp.com) blade servers, as well as installing KoldLok grommets supplied by Premier Solutions. KoldLok is also recommended by Premier Solutions for other cooling projects. “We’re working with a client now, a large enterprise, where we’re going through the data center and instead of them having a cutout in the floor for cabling, we’re going through and we’re sealing those cut-outs with a product called KoldLok,” Montgomery says. “What that’s doing is that it’s bringing more air pressure down in the subfloor, so that will help cool the room more. And what we’ve seen is that we’re putting their blades and their virtual servers in a different part of the data center, which is about 15,000 square feet. So, we’re working with them saying, ‘OK, let’s get all that airflow moving as far down to the blade servers as possible to cool the cold aisles.’” In order to direct hot air into the ceiling plenum, Premier Solutions suggests investing in an exhausting guard of room AC units. Finally, it’s important to utilize high CFM producing airflow panels. Maintaining Investments In addition to providing solutions to power and cooling needs, Premier Solutions offers data center maintenance, which Montgomery says is becoming a greater need for organizations. Data centers are becoming denser with the implementation of additional blade servers along with the traditional servers, and consequently the investments for organizations are increasing, as well. “That’s a service that technology is not going to replace not near anytime soon,” Montgomery says. “It will always be a need.” The data center cleaning Premier Solutions offers includes regularly scheduled maintenance, exterior server and hardware cleaning, raised HPL (high-pressure laminate) floor cleaning, subfloor decontamination and inspection, and particle count reporting. Training and educating his staff on industry trends has become a major priority because technology is changing so quickly along with the needs of Premier Solutions' clients. Montgomery expands the company's knowledgebase by sending employees to be coached by manufacturers, which happens approximately every four to six months. Additionally, Montgomery himself, along with others, attends events and conferences put on by companies such as Gartner. Premier Solutions, Montgomery says, has also been fortunate to land a variety of large enterprises with varying needs that diversify what his staff has had to learn and implement. Looking Ahead As Montgomery looks into the future, he sees the role of virtualization increasing over time. While he says it’s too soon to tell what the impact will be, he says there are plenty of reasons for organizations to consider implementing it into their data centers. Large firms looking to decrease hardware costs and increase server utilization are turning to virtualization as their data centers grow and experience build-outs. With virtualization, the number of physical servers maintained is reduced, while it also allows multiple applications to work together on one server, increasing efficiency and capacity. “What we’re doing is providing the storage cabinet,” Montgomery says. “It’s a deeper cabinet than normal because it’s 45 to 48 inches deep. It needs plenty of room for cabling, plenty of room for airflow, and that only takes 50 to 60 amps of power as opposed to 30 amps for the standards. So that’s changing their environment a lot, and it’s decreasing the footprint for quite a few clients. That’s going to be part of the data center for awhile.”