CHALLENGE
New Balance was looking to build a modern, best-in-class facility that embraced their three core values – integrity, teamwork and total customer satisfaction. e facility needed to be built with open workspaces and the ability to support the needs of their burgeoning global e-commerce presence. Implementing technology for 24/7/365 access that was sustainable, energy efficient and capable of providing a seamless user experience was important. New Balance was also looking to invest wisely in a system that was scalable and could grow quickly as their needs expanded. To achieve their goals, New Balance set forth to design and build a data center that could handle high-density racks loads at 17kW and a technology strategy that was scalable to meet their large computing requirements.
SOLUTION
Leading Edge Design Group was chosen to help New Balance develop a design that could deliver on their requirement for a high density, energy efficient facility. Also, New Balance relied on Leading Edge Design Group throughout the construction process to manage the construction and complex integration of the data center with the new building systems. The data center design was unique in that it utilized high-temperature chilled water (55°F) set points to maximize free cooling savings for New Balance. To validate that the data center would be able to support the very high density 17kW compute workloads at these design conditions, LEDG performed a Computational Fluid Dynamics or CFD analysis to simulate the data center operating conditions and validate that the cooling would perform as planned.
After the data center implementation, New Balance asked LEDG to perform data center functional testing to validate the actual performance of the power and cooling systems based on site conditions. To do so, LEDG utilized rack-mount load banks to simulate the expected high density compute environment and tested the cooling systems to verify performance and redundancy.
This innovative, modern data center design also includes the following:
A hot aisle containment system with dropout ceiling panels. The aisle containment offers the benefit of extending the capacity of the cooling system and supports high-density racks. Dropout ceiling panels are interlocked with the gaseous re suppression system for the panels to ‘drop out’ if the system is going to discharge.High efficiency through high temperature, chilled water (CW) design with a CW supply temperature of 55-60° Fahrenheit rather than the conventional 40-45° Fahrenheit. Increasing the chilled water supply temperature maximizes the amount of economization (“free cooling”) hours that New Balance will realize.
Redundant N + 1 design for power, cooling, and telecommunications is implemented – an industry best practice to incorporate redundancy.
High-density design for power and cooling capacity of 250kW and a maximum power load of 17KW per rack.
LEDG met New Balance’s aggressive 18-month timeline and contained construction costs. e innovative, streamlined data center solution provides a seamless user experience, energy- efficiency and scalability, and high-density computing to support the organization’s growth in athletic performance products. The project also aligned with New Balance’s commitment to lower energy use in every facility worldwide and integrate LEED elements into their renovations, tenant improvements, and new construction.