LA Community College District Refreshes Data Center for 9 Colleges

• By Sri Ravipati
• 02/08/17

As part of a major upgrade to its data center, the Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD) has rolled out a host of power management solutions from Eaton. The two-year project, launched in 2013, came out of a $6 billion construction plan across all nine LACCD colleges and the District Educational Services Center. Its main objective: to “buy the very best and invest for the long-term,” said Jorge Mata, CIO for LACCD, in a case study.

“We evaluated a host of technologies, identified things that were valuable in our performance specifications, and created a master agreement that would enable us to achieve very competitive pricing, great terms and conditions, and exceptional warranty coverage before we ever spent a penny,” Mata said.

After vetting a number of vendors, the college district awarded Eaton a master contract to implement the company’s BladeUPS, ePDUs (enclosure power distribution units), PDU (power distribution unit), IPM (intelligent power manager), Flex Busway, Paramount Enclosures, Cooling, Airflow Management and Hot Aisle Containment.

LACCD deployed two 60-kVA BladeUPSs, expandable rackmount UPSs with maintenance bypasses and IPM software for monitoring and managing power devices within a physical or virtual environment. The software solution “ensures system uptime and data integrity with remote monitoring, management and control of UPSs and other network devices.”

Eaton’s BladeUPS was specifically designed for high-density computing environments. The system uses Powerware Hot Sync paralleling technology that allows each module to operate separately and in synch. Furthermore, BladeUPS delivers “12 kW of efficient and reliable power,” according to the case study, while occupying just 6U of standard rack space.

Mata explained that the technology allowed LACCD to increase its efficiency from operating at N+1 at 100 percent load to being operational at N+3. “There are three nodes on standby,” he said, “and we have the system running at peak efficiency regardless of the load, which saves us money. On top of that, we have increased reliability and we can grow on demand with additional capacity. Not every vendor can offer that.”

In addition, Eaton’s Paramount Enclosures provide a “scalable, modular approach to enhance overall investment,” according to the case study. “The cabinets’ building-block design ensures quick reconfigurations and enhanced airflow management features.”

The LACCD data center, which houses shared services for all nine colleges, including payroll, student registration and information systems, finance, compliance reporting and human resources, now operates on what Mata referred to as “nonstop infrastructure” with the Eaton solution.

“To stay productive, your infrastructure must be very transparent,” he said. “We wanted a solution that would ensure no business disruption, address the bottom line and help our students and employees meet their bottom lines.”

To learn more, read about LACCD’s IT design standards here or visit the Eaton website.