The need to process significant amounts of digital data for daily life is impacting the way people work and shaping the infrastructure needed to manage it all. Numerous industries are leveraging the Internet of Things (IoT) to digitally transform their businesses, causing a growth in data, which are valuable assets. This increasing dependence on digital infrastructure indicates a greater need for integration of data centre IT equipment, highlighting the need to reduce the complex lifecycle costs of facilities.
Catering to many industries, including power systems and factory automation businesses, Mitsubishi Electric offers solutions to improve functions that reduce product maintenance and identify potential operational issues before they occur.
Durable and long-lasting products are the keys to low maintenance
Digital data is managed by IT equipment, and significant losses can arise during breakdowns, forcing service engineers to grapple with unscheduled stoppages. The business continuity plan (BCP) determines in advance how to respond to any failures that may occur in the data centre. The equipment that supplies power to IT equipment, and the air conditioners that mitigate the heat generated by high-power consuming IT equipment, are subject to high loads on a daily basis. That is why the risk of problems occurring must be minimised through planned maintenance and why lifecycle costs play a critical role.
Mitsubishi Electric ensures that high durability and long-term reliable use is incorporated into product design. These efforts help achieve the goal of increasing product reliability, and leads to improvements in the streamlining of maintenance activities, thereby bringing lifecycle costs down.
An example is uninterrupted power supply (UPS), a system that serves to backup and keep IT equipment operational during power outages. Long-lasting parts used in the electrolytic capacitors and cooling fans of UPS units help IT equipment last longer and open the way for small-scale power systems to be put in place for higher efficiency.1
With the Mitsubishi Electric packaged air conditioners for computer rooms, businesses can go without the need for connecting refrigerant piping to outdoor units. These air conditioners allow for continuous operation using the normal system when issues arise with the compressors and piping found in the secondary refrigerant circuit, plus enable backup operation using non-malfunctioning compressors within the primary refrigerant circuit, in which its workability is a priority.
Centralised management of linked equipment anticipates issues
For long-term, stable use of equipment, proper operation and maintenance are required, which affects the lifecycle cost. To address this, Mitsubishi Electric offers solutions that help reduce lifecycle costs by creating a network of the various data centre equipment and centralising the management of the operation status of each unit. Visualisation of facilities by linking various facilities in a data centre both improves operational efficiency, and helps to plan efficient operations that reduce the load on the facilities. This kind of preventive and predictive maintenance improvement is effective in limiting unexpected equipment failures.
Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems are often deployed to facilitate this linkage. These are systems structured to gather and analyse data from operational status signals transmitted from each piece of equipment, data from sensors installed on devices, and information from warnings and the monitoring system. The Mitsubishi Electric GENESIS64™, which is part of the ICONICS Suite™, is a SCADA software that allows you to graphically design a series of processes such as data recording, alarm notification, and report output using flowcharts.2
Among the optional features provided, there is one that displays useful information based on past anomalies to facilitate quick recovery of equipment when similar abnormalities reoccur. As an example of an application to an air conditioning system, the system analyses received alarms based on past cases and notifies the user of the action to be taken, in order of priority, among factors such as clogged fan intake or poor motor brake operation.
Long service lives and high durability are factors in the Mitsubishi Electric product design that allows for anticipation of potential problems in advance; such factors form the foundation of the company’s stance toward manufacturing. With this approach, Mitsubishi Electric contributes to improved reliability of data centres, but also assists with maintaining optimal operation of their facilities, and in doing so, reduce the lifecycle costs of data centres and ease the burden on maintenance engineers.
Notes
- Mitsubishi Electric: “Uninterruptible Power Supply and IT Cooling” https://vn.mitsubishielectric.com/en/building-solutions/ data-center/ups/index.html
- Iconics: “GENESIS64™ Next Generation in HMI SCADA Automation Software” https://iconics.com/Products/GENESIS64
