Sleek Networks Adds Lustre to Power Protection with PowerWAVE 9000DPAWhen hosting company Sleek Networks created a new Tier III data centre in 2009 it chose Leeds, West Yorkshire as its base - proactively advocating that London is not the only place to source quality hosting. For its fast-growing business, it based critical power protection on Uninterruptible Power Supplies’ advanced PowerWAVE 9000DPA, which offers flexible system expansion, in incremental steps. Nick Williams, Co-founder and Director of Sleek Networks, takes up the story: “PowerWAVE 9000DPA saved us having to spend a large amount of capital on power protection on day one and yet gave us the high availability our customers demand. "We also deliver our service using advanced server hardware and that requires a clean and stable power supply. PowerWAVE 9000DPA utilises inbuilt filters and rectifier technology to ‘condition’ the current and deliver a stable output. Crucially, however, it is truly modular and gives us the flexibility to increase capacity and grow the system in steps as our requirements grow. We looked at other solutions but didn’t find any as suitable as this.”  Initially, Sleek Networks bought a cabinet and installed one 50kVA module, which, a short time later, was increased to 100kVA by slotting another 50kVA module into the cabinet. The company is just about to increase that to 150kVA with another 50kVA module - and within 18 months will install a second cabinet taking capacity up to 500kVA.
The beauty of PowerWAVE 9000DPA is that it  offers a 'pay as you grow', approach, ideal for users like Sleek Networks where growth is fast but future requirements unpredictable. It consists of a single 'server style' rack cabinet in which one to five UPS modules (ranging in size from 10-50kVA) can be slotted to offer a maximum of 250kVA per cabinet. Each module is ‘hot-swappable’, which means it can be isolated, taken out and replaced should it develop a fault or require routine maintenance – a feature that substantially reduces meantime to repair (MTTR). Why DPA – Decentralised Parallel Architecture?  Parallel UPS whose modules share no common components are described as having Decentralised Parallel Architecture (DPA) as opposed to CPA – Centralised Parallel Architecture. PowerWAVE 9000DPA uses the DPA system. The primary benefit is extremely high availability (up to six nines 99.9999%) meaning there are effectively no single-points-of-failure. In installations as critical as Sleek Network’s, it is the preferred choice.
“We’ve incorporated redundancy into everything – air-conditioning, security, UPS. We have two data connections from different telcos.” Explains Williams. “Our new custom-built, high-spec facility in Leeds was completed in August 2009 and we already have a good number of customers hosting services. The site was deployed on time and on budget and built within six months. We've used the latest technologies such as PowerWAVE 9000DPA, which offer super green credentials and reliability, and Stulz N+1 Environmental Air-cooling alongside a Rack 'Cold-Aisle Containment' system. Concurrently, we rolled out our new VPS cloud platform at the new Leeds facility making use of NetApp SAN storage. All in all a busy few months but it puts us in a good position to provide the portfolio of data centre, hosting and network services our customers demand. Most importantly, it's all built, maintained, managed and owned by us.” The new PowerWAVE 9000DPA UPS system was utilized in earnest in December 2009 when much of Leeds was rendered powerless by a 25-minute utility power cut. “Downtime for that length of time would have destroyed us,” declares Williams. “PowerWAVE kicked in straight away and within ten minutes our onsite generator was providing us with standby power – none of our customers was ever aware that there had been a power cut.” Williams is also keen to stress that UPSL was extremely thorough, supportive and professional in their pre and post sales, technical support and project management. “We would definitely use them again.” He concludes. If you would like to talk to us about PowerWAVE 9000DPA, call: 0800 731 3269 or email: sales@upspower.co.uk. If you would like more information about Uninterruptible Power Supplies’ products and services, the PowerWAVE range of advanced solutions for reliable power click here. |