Your building management system (BMS) facilitates centralized control of your building’s electrical and mechanical equipment. Data centers rely heavily on BMS technologies to:
- Manage their cooling systems at the facility level
- Monitor power usage and consumption
- Maintain optimal conditions for servers and networking equipment
RF Code’s wire-free and active RFID temperature and humidity sensors can play a particularly important role in data centers—collecting data at the granular or rack level where BMS systems tend to have more blind spots. Wire-free and active RFID sensors offer data center operators superior flexibility and scalability, and over time, are more cost-effective than wired technologies. The precision of wire-free, active RFID environmental sensors provides BMS operators with next-level 99.9% accurate and real-time rack-level data needed to make better-informed temperature set point decisions.
For a clearer example of how RF Code sensors work with BMS, let’s consider the case of DataVita, a Scotland-based colocation provider. The company maintains the United Kingdom’s only Tier III-certified constructed facility north of London. DataVita’s assets include two state-of-the-art colocation data centers; through these centers, DataVita serves a diverse base of clients in both the public and private sectors.
DataVita’s operations director, Graeme Logie, manages data center operations for the company, along with DataVita’s project management office and service delivery arm. In a recent interview, Logie discussed DataVita’s deployment of RF Code environmental monitoring solutions across their colocation facilities. This conversation highlights the many positive impacts RF Code has had on business operations.
Better Environmental Data Leads to Better Decisions
DataVita’s two data centers host nearly 300 racks between them. Each rack has its own dedicated RF Code humidity and temperature monitoring sensor. DataVita also stations access control sensors at the front and back doors leading to each rack in the company’s facilities.
Discussing RF Code’s building management system technologies in the context of client retention and business growth, Logie highlights multiple important security benefits. The system’s advanced security features align perfectly with DataVita’s branding for robust on-site protection and access auditing. This helps DataVita maintain the elite levels of security their clients demand.
DataVita also integrated RF Code’s temperature and humidity sensors into its broader environmental condition control framework. Moreover, RF Code sensors serve as DataVita’s primary environmental monitoring tool; they control DataVita’s roof-mounted cooling units, to maintain optimal temperatures throughout the company’s colocation facilities.
To ensure compliance with customer service level agreements (SLAs), DataVita trusts the accuracy and real-time alerts from RF Code’s wire-free environmental sensor network. Under Logie’s supervision, DataVita utilizes RF Code rack-level data in client-facing weekly and monthly reports. Thanks to the granular environmental monitoring capabilities, RF Code’s solutions help enable DataVita to uphold its 100% uptime commitment in its SLA. This uninterrupted uptime represents a critical business differentiator and an important element of DataVita’s competitive advantage.
CenterScape: Making Your BMS Smarter
RF Code’s work with DataVita highlights three particular aspects of helping to improve the performance and value of BMS technologies: wire-free deployments, easy integration, and advanced data collection capabilities. These pillars combine to deliver important competitive advantages to colocation facilities.
Wire-Free Deployment
RF Code’s wire-free sensors and systems are easy and efficient to deploy and redeploy. Logie notes that the wire-free system’s ease of installation was a major reason DataVita selected RF Code’s BMS for its colocation facilities; DataVita was able to install the sensors and get them operational within minutes.
A wireless building management system carries higher upfront costs relative to wired alternatives. However, as Logie points out, wire-free systems' operational and efficiency advantages are desirable to clients. Logie describes the investment as delivering excellent returns from a cost-benefit standpoint—particularly given the system’s superior performance.
Easy Integration
DataVita was able to quickly integrate RF Code’s wireless sensor network into its building management system upon installation. This, in turn, facilitated DataVita’s smooth and efficient utilization of the RF Code data in its holistic environmental monitoring strategy. Every RF Code sensor feeds data back into DataVita’s BMS in real-time. As such, on-site personnel can immediately address any ambient environmental changes that require a response.
Logie also singles out the RF Code system’s ability to collect and apply granular data to avoid energy overconsumption. This allows DataVita to minimize energy consumption; as a result, DataVita can better control costs and maintain attractive client-side service pricing.
Granular Data
Without the RF Code system, DataVita would be reliant solely on its BMS for monitoring, measuring, and reporting on environmental conditions. Because its BMS does not collect or report granular data to the degree that it needs to, augmenting its BMS with RF Code sensors delivers the kind of precision insights that optimize facility performance and cost efficiency.
The granular data collected by the RF Code system also imbues Logie’s team with elevated confidence. Technical personnel can immediately pinpoint the nature and urgency of alerts generated within the system; they can then quickly identify the type of response required, optimizing DataVita’s deployment of onsite resources while ensuring optimal function and safety of its server network.
Logie summarizes the value of the RF Code system by saying that it delivers “more opportunity to conduct more granular monitoring for the same spend.” He singles this performance feature out as the system’s biggest benefit.
Enhanced Customer Portal Data
RF Code delivers data in real-time to an enhanced customer portal, where colocation tenants can access it. This allows colocation facilities to harness competitive advantages by instantly delivering granular environmental information to clients, enhancing customer confidence and peace of mind.
The Present and Future of Colocation Facilities: Automation, Sustainability, and More
RF Code solutions have also helped DataVita meet internal sustainability targets. The real-time data collected and reported by RF Code sensors helps DataVita make automated adjustments in their colocation facility’s management systems. The intelligence provided facilitates a conscientious optimization of energy and resource management, controlling DataVita’s electricity and water consumption.
Logie specifically identifies resource consumption as a critical element of data center operations. As large power consumers, data centers and colocation facilities find themselves in the spotlight regarding climate and environmental concerns. Thus, investments in the efficiency improvements facilitated by RF Code systems further boost their value proposition, as data centers increasingly seek to brand themselves to clients as more sustainable.
As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to advance, it presents new opportunities for data centers to better manage and optimize their building management systems and reduce resource consumption. Logie characterizes AI as offering a potentially powerful set of additional automation capabilities soon—which will further improve the precision and efficiency of resource consumption.
RF Code’s work with DataVita offers an excellent case study of how our environmental and temperature monitoring technologies improve data center service, efficiency, and sustainability. To experience these benefits yourself, please reach out to RF Code for a risk-free, cost-free demo today.
