Winchester University has implemented Eaton's power management infrastructure solution to ensure students and staff are able to access the university's network 24/7.
The university decided to find a new solution to its power supply needs when its previous Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) failed, meaning students living in the university's student villages were unable to access the network. The outage also posed an environmental risk, with batteries in the UPS giving off fumes.
As as result, it opted for a supplier that could provide new hardware and diagnostic software too, so it could consistently monitor the condition of batteries and utilise other diagnostic tools. It also wanted a power management platform that could run on the company's existing VMware virtualised environment.
"The IT network is a really important part of a modern university; we provide a service to students and teaching staff and it's hugely important that the network gives guaranteed uptime for them to do online research and study whenever they require," said Sean Ashford, Network and Systems Manager at University of Winchester.
"We also need to ensure that there's no risk of data loss that could ultimately impact a student's grades. But we're not just a place of study, students live here and we need to ensure quality of service in the network in their downtime too."
Eaton installed 50 5PX single phase 3kVA units across the campus, each offering up to 20 minutes of standby power, which is enough time for the university's backup supply to come online and protect the network from data loss. The company also installed two 9SX 5000VA UPSs to support applications on the edge of the network and a 93PM UPS in the University of Winchester's data centre.
"Eaton has been a really important partner in helping to bring the university's IT infrastructure up to standard. The quality of service from the UPS systems was a critical factor in our choice of supplier, but more than that, it's the support that Eaton brings in enabling us to monitor and manage our systems so that we know exactly what is going on at any point in the network," Ashford concluded.
