Huawei’s Innovative Data Center Solution Helps Linyi Promote Smart City Development

Background

Digital transformation has swept through the cities and districts in China’s Shandong province driven by the tides of Digital China and Smart Society. As a central city in Southeast Shandong’s Port Industry Belt, located at the intersection between the Yangtze River Delta Economic Circle and the Bohai Economic Circle, Linyi is an important “Digital Shandong” strategy component. 

The Linyi government manages to leverage cutting-edge technologies, such as cloud computing, big data, the Internet, the Internet of Things (IoT), and artificial intelligence, to accelerate government operations reform with the goal to improve efficiency in government office affairs, employment services, and industry development. Big data center construction is crucial to achieve this goal. To accelerate digital transformation and build an efficient and smart government, the Linyi government has played an active role in promotion of their construction.

Challenges

Linyi’s staff faces complex and disordered daily work that can lead to O&M inefficiencies and creates human errors.

Solution

After consideration of factors such as service rollout time, energy efficiency, security as well as reliability, Linyi government chose Huawei’s Data Center Solution. Both parties worked together to build a data center benchmark in South Shangdong — Linyi Big Data Center.

Based on the unified platform of public big data and cloud computing in the city, the Linyi government can further unify, converge, and open data resources related to the Party and government agencies as well as public enterprise institutions, to facilitate scientific government decision-making, refined social governance, and high efficiency of public services.

The Linyi Big Data Center is located in the Linyi Economic and Technological Development Zone. The project was constructed in strict accordance with the national class A equipment room standard. There were six standard modular equipment rooms in total. More than 1,000 19-inch cabinets were deployed that could carry 10,000+ servers. To ensure the big data center's rapid rollout, Huawei provided innovative data center infrastructure solutions that included the 1.2-megawatt integrated power supply and distribution solution, indirect evaporative cooling temperature control solution, and a new-generation Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM+) system. Apart from the rapid deployment, the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) value of the data center reached 1.25, which met the requirements for a world-class and leading data center in China.

The 1.2-megawatt integrated power supply and distribution solution, indirect evaporative cooling temperature control solution, and new-generation DCIM+ represent Huawei’s technical achievements as follows:

1. The 1.2-megawatt FusionPower integrated power supply and distribution solution features high energy efficiency, small footprint, and reduced installation and maintenance hours

In traditional large-scale data centers, multiple UPSs are connected in parallel, and the N+1 or 2N power distribution architecture is configured to achieve large-capacity and reliable power supply. However, too many parallel cables, a large footprint, complex construction, and a long delivery period tend to delay the data center services’ rollout. In addition, as power distribution systems are split, Operations and Maintenance (O&M) efficiency is low and faults cannot be located fast.

Huawei takes the lead to adopt the industry-leading integrated power supply and distribution technology that integrates UPS input and output power distribution, bypass power distribution, and UPS into single equipment to provide users with the 1.2-megawatt FusionPower integrated power supply and distribution solution. The UPS is combined with the Power Distribution Frame (PDF), and 40 percent of the footprint is saved compared with traditional power distribution solutions. Busbars are prefabricated, which saves 60 percent of the labor hours required of traditional cable engineering. The built-in iPower is used to monitor key nodes’ temperature and predict key components’ service life. The iBattery is used to monitor batteries. Therefore, the power supply and distribution system shifts from simple hardware to proactive prevention.

Huawei’s FusionPower UPS enjoys a system efficiency of 97 percent and a module efficiency of 97.5 percent, to lead the industry. To use Linyi Big Data Center’s actual operation as an example, a single UPS can save RMB450,000 in its 10-year lifecycle, and incur a considerable reduction in Operating Expenses (OPEX).

2. With the indirect evaporative cooling solution (FusionCol), the PUE is decreased from 1.45 to 1.25, to reduce cooling costs and simplify deployment and maintenance.

Linyi is located north of the Huaihe River with four distinct seasons and a mild temperature (14.1°C is the annual average temperature). Due to the annual free cooling time of more than 200 days, the data center’s power consumption is reduced to a considerable extent, and a large amount of electricity cost is saved.

Traditional large data centers, for the most part, adopt chilled water systems and use plate heat exchangers to take advantage of the natural cooling source. This design has difficulties in design, construction and O&M:

(1) The water system is large and complex. Pipe design, component selection, and control logic need to be customized based on different projects. Therefore, the design period is lengthy.

(2) Too many pipes cause a large number of cross interfaces in actual engineering, for difficult project management coordination and finished part protection. The construction time lasts more than half or an entire year.

(3) Due to the system complexity, professional Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) engineers are required to maintain the system. The maintenance efficiency is low and the cost is high.

To resolve these problems and ensure fast deployment, Huawei provided the FusionCol indirect evaporative cooling Air Handling Unit (AHU) solution.

The FusionCol indirect evaporative cooling system has a built-in high-efficiency heat exchanger core for efficient use of the external cooling source. Indirect heat transfer is effective to avoid external air interference. The integrated modular design saves a lot of space and reduces deployment difficulty and duration.

The FusionCol supports multiple cooling modes that include dry, wet, and hybrid. The cooling mode is switched as required. Efficient heat exchange components and reasonable airflow design ensure that the average PUE of Linyi Big Data Center is 1.25 (the average data centers’ PUE in the same region is 1.45), to significantly reduce the data center’s subsequent operational costs.

The FusionCol adopts a modular design. Compared with traditional chilled water systems, the amount of pipe construction and commissioning is reduced, to shorten the project duration and simplify O&M. Linyi’s Big Data Center project started in May and was prepared for trial operation in September of the same year. More than 50 percent of the construction duration was shortened compared with traditional water cooled systems.

3. The DCIM+ is effective to improve O&M efficiency.

Linyi Big Data Center carries a large number of service systems such as cloud computing, big data, and IoT, that pose severe challenges to O&M. Secure management of ultra-large data centers with maximum production value of their resources is the challenge and core issue that faces the O&M team.

Based on the preceding core technologies and Huawei’s years of experience in data center construction, the project was delivered for trial operation within just four months and a few days. 

Benefits

Huawei’s NetEco6000 DCIM+ is a perfect fit for Linyi’s demands. The system uses cloud-based and intelligent technologies to redefine the data center management system and match the cloud computing center scenario. In addition to the centralized management of power supply, distribution and cooling devices in the data center, the system also provides services such as operation, O&M, and energy efficiency.

With more than 20 years’ experience in self-operated large-scale data centers and Huawei’s technical capabilities regarding AI and big data, the DCIM+ frees the Linyi Big Data Center staff from complex and disordered daily work through digital, network-based, and intelligent methods. Now the staff can focus on process optimization and continuous improvement of O&M quality that improves O&M efficiency, avoids human errors, and creates a more secure and reliable Linyi Big Data Center.

The Linyi Big Data Center had the shortest construction period and the most-advanced energy-saving technology of China’s other big data centers at the same level. It set a new benchmark in South Shangdong. The successful delivery of the project laid a solid foundation to build Linyi into a smart city, and provided reliable and continuous support for Linyi to convert an old driving force into new one.