Power Distribution in a Datacenter?

d00dman asks: "I work for a colocation reseller. We don't own our datacenter, we lease cage space and with it we get an array of 30amp and 15amp power circuits. My problem is, inside of the cage we need to do our own power distribution. We have around 50 hosts in the facility, and are growing quickly. We need to add another 20 or so hosts in coming month. We are looking for a simple, scalable, and even power distribution method. As always, money IS an object. Right now we have a group of UPS's with power strips plugged into each. While this was sufficient for as many as 30 hosts, its starting to become a bit of a mess. Does anyone have any advice to offer...any creative tricks?"

Comments

42 V DC busbars

[shoppa]

You say money is an object - but that doesn't rule out the telco approach to power distribution, with all the surplus telco equipment on the surplus market:

• Convert incoming power (whatever form) to 42VDC.
• Have a big bank of batteries charged by the 42 VDC.
• Run all your equipment from power cables attached to big copper busbars with 42V between them.

Advantages: you get rid of your UPS's, you have a very scalable power system (telcos never unplug anything!), lots of big manly metal things.

Disadvantage: dropping a wrench across the 42V busbars is a bad thing

If you don't have access to a lot of surplus rackmount PC's with 42VDC-in power supplies and are really on a budget, do it with 12VDC instead and use these servers that run off 12V very nicely.