Advanced Monitoring and Control for a Data Center Leader in Italy

Project Scope

• Tags: 25,000
• Screens: 250
• Clients: approx. 20 daily active clients, 4 dedicated terminals
• Alarms: approx. 15,000
• Devices used: More than 50 devices, such as ABB AC500 PLCs, Socomec UPS, Pramac gensets, ABB Network Analyzers and MV Relais, Honeywell Firefighting Systems
• Architectures used: Standard Ignition Architecture
• Databases used: MySQL
• Historical data logged: 3 billion rows, 6,000 historical tags, two years of data retention, monthly partitioning

Project Overview

This project provided Aruba with an advanced real-time monitoring and control system for its revamped IT2 Arezzo Data Center. This was Aruba’s first data center, put into operation more than 15 years ago, covering approximately 2,000 square meters.

After the positive experience with a previous MTech project, Aruba wanted to give a new shape to this old but still strategic data center, with particular attention to the use of modern technologies, building a flexible control system to control all its subsystems.

The system includes:

• Data center electrical power distribution (medium voltage – low voltage) and continuity (UPS, batteries, and gensets)
• Renewable electrical power production (photovoltaic)
• Data center firefighting and flooding (with more than 50 sensors)
• Data rooms cooling with traditional chillers
• Ambient conditions monitoring (temperature, humidity, air quality)
• Building automation (lighting, HVAC, and access management)

All this data collection and interaction must lead to:

• Plant monitoring
• Remote commands
• Automatic management procedures
• Real-time alarms, pipelines, and notifications
• Long-term historian
• Power consumption analysis
• Data center KPIs
• Maintenance

Ignition allowed MTech to easily connect to all the devices installed in the plant and collect a huge amount of data in a structured way, using UDTs. Developing PLC software with Ignition UDTs and templates in mind allowed MTech to create PLC elements using an object-oriented approach.

Some customer requirements were:

• Detailed graphic interface and universal access from any device
• SQL database data storage
• Access for multiple concurrent clients 
• Structured alarm notification

All these were fulfilled by Ignition Perspective. Unlimited tags/clients licensing gave space for future (and really fast) growth of the system. The solution also includes an audit log and third-party software data access.

When the project was started in late 2019, the Perspective Module was something new and incredibly fascinating with the possibilities it provided in the development and enjoyment of content for MTech. After more than a year of development on this platform, customer expectations have been fully met, creating something new and innovative in the data center management industry.

Once again, Ignition has demonstrated its power and flexibility, as well as an incredible ability to bring real innovation into the hands of customers. The ability to manage truly complex systems from the palm of your hand is certainly the real next step in automation and control of systems.