Racks play a crucial role in the functioning of the data center is Societe Generale Software Asia realized when they implemented Rittal's world class racking solutions in their data center.

This state-of-the-art deve­lop­­ment cum data center located at the International Technology Park (ITPL) was equipped with top-of-the-line infrastructure. Societe Generale focuses extensively on deve­loping software solutions for global investment banking operations. The bank also offers services in financial software R&D, consultancy, project management and development. So while Societe Generale was on the lookout for the right kind of partner who would meet their requirements in the most cost efficient manner. Bengaluru-based System Integration, Pursuit Technologies came to their rescue. Pursuit deployed Rittal racking solutions in addition to meeting other requirements of Societe Gene­rale well within time. This not only helped Societe Generale by reducing their power consumption and electricity bills extensively, but also in utilizing the space available for data center more efficiently.

Project requirement
The project that was valued at Rs 1 crore required Pursuit to optimize space and simul­taneously extend thermal management inside the racks. The client was also looking for energy efficient cooling solution and security for their critical servers.

Rittal has been rendering services to Societe Generale since 2004 by providing racking solution for stacking servers, network switches, patch panels at data center, communication network room for their facilities in Bengaluru.

Challenges
Pursuit was faced with the challenge of accommodating huge quantities of servers inside the racks under a single roof with better thermal manage­ment for high density servers wherein the heat dissipation is too high. In this case, the company required a racking solution along with high load bearing capacity in the range of 1,000 to 1,200 kg. Hence, Pursuit offered racks by Rittal with a nine folded design with CRCA sheet. The racks can bear a load upto 1,200 kg and the height of the rack was 42U (2,000mm) which is customized as per requirement of the customer for better optimization of space. The front and rear doors of these racks are fully perforated. By using this solution, Societe Generale could have achieved the best thermal management in the data center racks even after housing high density servers for the entire height of the rack.

Arun Kumar, Director, Pursuit Technologies said, “We had a challenge to build data center cum development center within an area of 50,000sq ft as there were more than 100 plus servers to be placed within the center. Besides, they also wanted the local area network be put in place by us. We supplied HP servers for setting up their entire development center. We had the critical task of setting up the entire infrastructure. Rittal racks were chosen as the company is the only one that offers solutions around thermal management besides extending in-built cooling system. The company also has an in-built power distribution unit within the rack that extends intelligent power and load management critical to the proper functioning of the server.”

A team comprising 15 members from Pursuit Technologies took around three months to implement and design the entire project. However, there were several challenges that came in the way of Pursuit Technologies despite the fact that this was the second occasion when they were implementing a project for Societe Generale. Apart from Pursuit, there were other contractors including interior designer, electric contractors who were involved at various roles in the project. The team from Pursuit had to keep in mind that they were working in union. Therefore, they had to coordinate at several points like during site meetings and other planning.

Key learnings
There were number of lessons that the team from Pursuit learnt from the entire project. Besides, adopting best practices the team also learnt new techniques around network implementation.

“With every project, we gained a lot of experience and improved on our skills. We were able to create awareness among our clients that racks play a crucial role in the designing of an entire data center. By merely providing the correct amount of area between racks we were able to save enough space and by paying heed to the designing of the racks we could help our client reduce the cost of power and achieve higher TCO,”added Kumar.

In Societe Generale's case, Pursuit made use of rack that had split doors at the rear end. This helped the team to save a lot of space that the servers could have otherwise occupied within the data center. Using racks that had perforations in them ensured that the servers were never heated up as there was smooth air flow within the server racks. If normal rack door would have been used then each of the racks would have taken more than 900 cm of space. This was reduced to half by using merely split door racks.

“Since we had a constrained data center space, we sat with the client and explained to them the benefits of using Rittal racks. We had to place 40 racks within the given space. Another designs these racks using good quality steel, which is crucial to the overall functioning of the ser­vers within a data center, an area where many companies compro­mise,” quipped Kumar.

Customer speaks
By using Rittal's racks, Societe Generale has achieved the optimal utilization of space in data center and proper thermal management within racks with perforated doors. Besides racks also came with access control ensuring the security aspect that is crucial to the functioning of the entire data center as various critical applications run on these servers. “Pursuit is our long term technology partners and we have benefited in a number of ways through the installation of racks and the entire network that they had implemented for our data center,” mentioned Muralidharan, VP-IT, Societe Generale Software Asia.

Pooja Sharma
(poojas@cybermedia.co.in)

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