A recent white paper from Emerson Network Power (NYSE: EMR) seeks to provide data center managers with a clearer understanding of key factors and considerations involved in selecting the right uninterruptible power supply (UPS) to meet the current and future needs of a given data center, and to optimize the performance of a facility. The main thrust of Emerson's analysis boils down to one word: Availability.
According to Emerson, "As the complexity of data center environments continues to grow, data center managers are increasingly concerned about maintaining or improving availability in increasingly dense computing environments while increasing efficiency and reducing costs. Therefore, it is important they pick the right flexible UPS technology for their data center."
The white paper adds, "Availability concerns are very familiar to data center managers. It comes down to simple economics: given the high cost of downtime, availability naturally became the most important metric on which data centers were evaluated in recent years. It wasn’t uncommon for data center managers and corporations to operate under an 'availability at any cost' approach. This mindset also dominated the selection criteria for UPS systems."
Emerson also notes that "historically, data center designers and managers have had to balance tradeoffs between availability and efficiency in the data center power system."
The company explains, "Online double-conversion UPS modules provided the highest availability but could not deliver the same efficiency as a line-interactive topology. Advances in double-conversion UPS technology have closed the gap in efficiency, and new features have been introduced that enable double-conversion UPS systems to achieve efficiencies on par with line-interactive systems, while still providing the needed power quality. These technology advances and new features help organizations safeguard availability, while increasing efficiency and advancing scalability in the data center."
View/Download the white paper.