Data center keeps its cool during upgrade

Black Friday is one of the retail industry’s biggest days. It’s the unofficial start of the Christmas shopping period and Americans, sated from Thanksgiving, go into a retail frenzy. So imagine the headache when a major data center – which processes millions of retail transactions each day – had to upgrade its cooling system during this time.

Without full data center availability, retailers wouldn’t be able to process transactions. Every 10 minutes of downtime could mean losses of more than $200 million. Plus, downtime would deliver nationwide notoriety – for all the wrong reasons. The facility needed a temporary system for climate control over the holiday period.

During the upgrade, the facility was facing two weeks without cooling, but we knew just what was needed to cover them during this period. Our engineers and cooling tower specialists teamed up to design a 1,600-tonne temporary cooling system that met needs and also handle increased loads. After all, who knew what Black Friday would bring?

The system combined chillers, cooling towers and generators – plus a standby system in case of failure. It was specially designed to improve cooling water performance and, of course, ensure non-stop availability.

For two weeks, our temporary cooling system did the job of keeping the climate within the data center just right. None of their critical equipment needed to be switched off, which meant that holiday shopping could continue at pace. With our foolproof contingency back-up giving the facility’s operators complete peace of mind, the holy grail of data centers – non-stop availability – was achieved.