Improving resilience - introducing a backup generator

[localzuk]

As our school is likely going to be providing services from a central point to multiple schools, redundancy and resilience are more important than ever.

 

As such, I am investigating the idea of having a small backup generator installed that can automatically kick in should power go down here.

 

Has anyone else got this in place? If we go down this route, the server room wouldn't have a huge amount of equipment in it (the wonders of virtualisation), so the generator wouldn't need to be that huge.

 

My query really is - who would I go to about doing this? Backup generators aren't your everyday install for a local electrician.

[unixman_again]

We had one when I worked in facilities management. It lived in it's own room, I have no idea of cost, but I imagine at least 5 figures. There aren't many companies that deal with this. The only one that I can find are Emergency Backup Generator & UPS Power Systems UK | Power Continuity I've not dealt with them personally, but I have heard of them, so they might be OK.

[Steve21]

Not sure how much you're planning to do from your side, but have you considered just hosting the "shared" bits within a cloud provider?

 

From the sounds of your other threads, seems a lot of it is based upon "sync'd" areas, e.g. DFS/SCCM etc which in reality 2-3 instances in the cloud would then allow everyone to connect and sync via as the "main" point. Still have the local servers but like you sync to cloud, cloud syncs to MAT etc. Removes the whole need for the extra resilience/double internet/switches etc

 

Obviously depends on how much you'll share but yeah

 

In regards to the actual question though, do you "need/want" auto start? As when we were looking at the option before (lots of power cuts here), most the generators aren't designed for plugging straight into devices so we were advised to go Generator into a fat-UPS connected to Servers, and in that case there's no need for auto-start as if power goes we're running on UPS and turn generators if UPS is near empty.

 

Steve

 

Steve

[SchoolsBroadband]

As our school is likely going to be providing services from a central point to multiple schools, redundancy and resilience are more important than ever.

 

As such, I am investigating the idea of having a small backup generator installed that can automatically kick in should power go down here.

 

Has anyone else got this in place? If we go down this route, the server room wouldn't have a huge amount of equipment in it (the wonders of virtualisation), so the generator wouldn't need to be that huge.

 

My query really is - who would I go to about doing this? Backup generators aren't your everyday install for a local electrician.

 

 

 

or another idea why not host your servers in your ISP's data centres where they'll be on bigger pipes which has UPS and diesel generator as standard? or use an IaaS platform instead?

 

Dave

[localzuk]

or another idea why not host your servers in your ISP's data centres where they'll be on bigger pipes which has UPS and diesel generator as standard? or use an IaaS platform instead?

 

Dave

 

A possibility, sure. But I suspect cost will be higher (and I suspect the bosses won't like that idea). Once I've got my quote/proposal from you guys (Lisa is working on it), I might ask for some costs/details of that too.

[3s-gtech]

Hmm. An electronic starting generator that can be controlled to kick in when needed, in an appropriate room/enclosure, is going to be pretty pricey. Not sure how the switchover equipment will work - I'd imagine it's a heavy duty installation - you'd want UPSs on the other side of it so the servers are always running through them whichever source is used. Instant switchover may be difficult, but the UPS would take care of that. Specialist advice may be useful, even if it just confirms that it's too pricey! Computer and server room standby solutions from UPS Systems

Data Centre Electrical Design

 

You may be able to hybridise this to some extent - you don't need a massive generator if you have a highly virtualised and efficient server room, but I suspect the control systems and install make up a huge chunk of the cost.

[dhicks]

Has anyone else got this in place?

 

As discussed above, you'd have the generator supply a UPS which would then supply your devices, smoothing out any power spikes and covering the time it takes for the power to go off and your generator to kick in. We have a suitible UPS in the basement, set up so that we could add a generator in the future if we wished. The UPS supplies several workstations and switches throughout the building as well as our small-ish server cupboard. The work was done by some contractors from Essex - PM me if you want their details, although they're probably a bit far away from you.

 

All things considered, it didn't actually cost as much as we thought it might - I think it was under £10,000 for installation of the electrical cabling around the building. That didn't include the cost of the UPS - add maybe another £5,000 for an 8,000VA UPS and a couple of expansion batteries. A generator isn't that much more, either (£2,000-ish?). Our main issue was going to be figuring out where to store a large tank of diesel - we don't have any spare room on site and are in central London, but a school with larger grounds would probably have less of a problem.

 

Edit: momentary power cut this afternoon, just after I'd posted the above - lights flickered off and on a bit, but servers and UPS-backed workstations all fine. We have an inspection next week, and teachers and staff are all working hard getting stuff ready - I figure that's £20,000-odd on UPS equipment well spent :-)

Edited February 4, 2016 by dhicks

[Vegas]

PM sent

[twin--turbo]

I project managed an install of UPS/Genset but that was in 1994 .

 

We had one at my second place UPS/Genset combo. Thing never started when it was supposed to despite us testing manual start every weekend. And it blew up the phone system that was not on the UPS.

 

My current place we have UPS/Genset . So far in 26 months in the new building it has only run the Genset in anger once. On power failure the server room, customer services and IT support all get supported by UPS within 5 seconds the genorator is running and stable and supplying the rest of the office ( ~300 People ). When this occured for real the whole area off town was off but we were running happily for 2hrs till the mains came back on. We could have lasted indefinitely on the generator, even the fast boilers worked for coffee.

 

There are many many companies that can do an install.

 

TT