CENTIEL supports Sure’s Data Centres

Sure’s data centres on the Channel Islands keep some of Europe’s largest organisations’ critical data safe and secure in a location outside of mainland UK and Europe. 

Louis McGarry, Sales and Marketing Director, Centiel explains:  “As an organisation, Sure requires the highest level of uptime and is also committed to reducing energy usage throughout its facilities.  CumulusPowerTM was selected to replace a number of legacy UPS, providing a more efficient solution now that Sure is on a zero-carbon path.” 

The upgrade to legacy equipment in data halls 4, 5 and 8 this year to CumulusPowerTM has seen the whole facility convert to the latest technology, which offers significantly higher resilience and availability (nine-nines 99.9999999% which equates to milliseconds per year) than previously, in addition to achieving significant energy savings, costs and reducing carbon footprint.  Due to the true modular nature of CumulusPower it is highly efficient, meaning it runs at 97% efficiency compared with <80% for the previous UPS. 

Simon Roger, Facilities Manager, Sure commented:  “We chose Centiel’s CumulusPower as the leading power protection technology on the market. 

“I am pleased to say that the UPS replacements in Data Centres 4 and 5 are now complete with no more switching events required and the change requests are both closed.  We have seen the predicted instant power savings equating to an estimated 20-30% approximately with the current IT load. The UPS are also uber reliable and take up less space and we have saved around seven racks on this installation which can be used for clients.”

Due to the location of the Channel Islands, trained engineers usually need to fly to the Islands to complete necessary maintenance work.  CumulusPower’s modules can be ‘hot/safe swapped’ in a running load therefore, Centiel has also trained Sure’s engineers in first level response.  Sure’s team can now complete basic monitoring, diagnostics and maintenance of the UPS. 

Simon Roger continues: “CumulusPower is unique in the market because it enables UPS modules to be swapped safely by our trained team without switching the UPS off.  This safe-hot-swap functionality means even if we need to replace a module and send it for repair, we do not experience any downtime, ensuring maximum availability for our clients.”

Centiel’s team worked seamlessly with Sure to enable these works, delivering within budget, ahead of schedule and with zero downtime. 

Louis McGarry confirms: “From our experience, the energy savings when replacing old for new could result in a system paying for itself in three to five years.  This is good news for the environment and clients alike.  This reduced total cost of ownership is supplemented by having industry leading availability and ease of maintenance.  It is no wonder that CumulusPowerTM has now been installed in datacenters and comms rooms in over 100 countries across 5 continents, protecting more than 100 MW of critical power loads in locations including:  the UK, Singapore, Australia, Germany, Spain, the Czech Republic and now the Channel Islands.

“We are proud to have helped Sure to meet their objective of reducing energy and their carbon footprint, on this important project.”