HOLY $H!T - Man-sized UPS

[Roawoao]

6 minutes ago, xentric said:

Yes that is part of the "CAS" system (I think is what they called it because there is no ground). Each battery has a chip in it and they can monitor voltage, temperature and many more. All those go into that rack at the end of the aisle then to the main system.

Why does the city need a giant UPS? is it because they can't just switch feeds and have to wait for a standby gas turbine plant to start locally? I'm betting just one lithium battery module from that setup could power the LMG server room for quite some time with a much smaller inverter.

[xentric]

Just now, Roawoao said:

Why does the city need a giant UPS? is it because they can't just switch feeds and have to wait for a standby gas turbine plant to start locally? I'm betting just one battery module could power the LMG server room for quite some time with a much smaller inverter set-up.

This is a research facility mostly. (part of the smart grid idea) It's why I went and visited the site has a project for my university.

[Zodiark1593]

6 hours ago, Roawoao said:

Strange are those yellow wires going to the lithium batteries look like Ethernet cables are they being used for balancing or a pack level monitoring boards.

Yes, they are. Like any other multi-cell lithium pack, these need to be charged in balance, except in this case, the cells appear to be communicating with one-another as opposed to having a bunch of dumb cells charged by a balance charger. 

[Roawoao]

18 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Yes, they are. Like any other multi-cell lithium pack, these need to be charged in balance, except in this case, the cells appear to be communicating with one-another as opposed to having a bunch of dumb cells charged by a balance charger. 

I wonder if they batteries are actually using Ethernet proper for communications it does support floating voltages if the boards have no common ground or are they using isolated differential serial bus type stuff RS-485 just on an Ethernet cable because it is convenient. 

[beavo451]

17 hours ago, Roawoao said:

Drywall in itself doesn't give much of a fire rating probably 30 minutes tops. You need to stack them up if you want a decent fire rating. Using mineral/rock wool insulation also bolsters your fire rating. Then seal all penetrations with intumescent sealant and use radiation dampers on all ventilation openings. Then you can get a proper 1 hour+ rating easily.

 

Getting a fire rating is not everything. This server room is essentially a small closet in the middle of everything and on the first floor. Not only do you have to prevent fire from getting into the room, you also have to prevent temperatures from rising enough to damage the equipment. And adequate structural integrity to prevent the room from collapsing due to falling debris/whatever. And then it has to resist fire fighting efforts (water, foam, whatever) during and after being in a fire.

 

Again, money and effort better spent on insurance (which you are already going to have anyway) and backups.

[Roawoao]

9 minutes ago, beavo451 said:

Getting a fire rating is not everything. This server room is essentially a small closet in the middle of everything and on the first floor. Not only do you have to prevent fire from getting into the room, you also have to prevent temperatures from rising enough to damage the equipment. And adequate structural integrity to prevent the room from collapsing due to falling debris/whatever. And then it has to resist fire fighting efforts (water, foam, whatever) during and after being in a fire.

 

Again, money and effort better spent on insurance (which you are already going to have anyway) and backups.

I'm more just saying that one sheet of drywall doesn't really count as fireproof in the sense that the rating would be minimal at best.

 

The UPS itself is quite a hazard alone due to all the batteries it contains inside in addition to the 100A circuit going through it. Insurance won't really mitigate the lost time and work that may be irreplaceable work that would be lost. I'd probably keep it on the outside of the server room so in a catastrophic UPS failure it won't necessarily torch all the servers. Also in a power failure the UPS is just going to make the room even hotter without a UPS powered blower running. (The HVAC air handler doesn't have backup power).

 

In this case it is easy (tiny room, single wall) and in large server farms it is safer to have battery rooms in a separate room at least due to the chance of catastrophic failure and then all them stored electrons leaking out (arcing) with the chemicals being liberated forcefully into the air (acid gas hydrogen fire). (probably don't want that happening near your data).

[beavo451]

1 hour ago, Roawoao said:

I'm more just saying that one sheet of drywall doesn't really count as fireproof in the sense that the rating would be minimal at best.

 

The UPS itself is quite a hazard alone due to all the batteries it contains inside in addition to the 100A circuit going through it. Insurance won't really mitigate the lost time and work that may be irreplaceable work that would be lost. I'd probably keep it on the outside of the server room so in a catastrophic UPS failure it won't necessarily torch all the servers. Also in a power failure the UPS is just going to make the room even hotter without a UPS powered blower running. (The HVAC air handler doesn't have backup power).

 

In this case it is easy (tiny room, single wall) and in large server farms it is safer to have battery rooms in a separate room at least due to the chance of catastrophic failure and then all them stored electrons leaking out (arcing) with the chemicals being liberated forcefully into the air (acid gas hydrogen fire). (probably don't want that happening near your data).

I think you and I are saying essentially the same thing in different ways.

 

That server room setup is probably not the best.

 

Drywall in itself is fire resistant as one poster was seemingly implying that it was fire hazard.

 

A 100 amp panel itself isn't any more "dangerous" than the average residential electrical panel. Yes, the UPS does have a lot of potential energy due to the batteries.

 

On this scale, the loss of the server room in a catastrophic event (fire) isn't going to be that much of loss time and work. They have networking gear, a render server, and a data server. The data should be backed up off-site. The loss of the equipment isn't anything when you have replace all the other workstations that were destroyed in a fire.

 

So, I will maintain my original statement that the cost to "fire proof" this server room would be pretty high. "Fire proof" as in ensuring that contents of the server room survive intact. This cost would not be worth it when you factor in the risk of a fire actually happening and the loss if there was one.

[Roawoao]

Just now, beavo451 said:

I think you and I are saying essentially the same thing in different ways.

 

That server room setup is probably not the best.

 

Drywall in itself is fire resistant as one poster was seemingly implying that it was fire hazard.

 

A 100 amp panel itself isn't any more "dangerous" than the average residential electrical panel. Yes, the UPS does have a lot of potential energy due to the batteries.

 

On this scale, the loss of the server room in a catastrophic event (fire) isn't going to be that much of loss time and work. They have networking gear, a render server, and a data server. The data should be backed up off-site. The loss of the equipment isn't anything when you have replace all the other workstations that were destroyed in a fire.

 

So, I will maintain my original statement that the cost to "fire proof" this server room would be pretty high. "Fire proof" as in ensuring that contents of the server room survive intact. This cost would not be worth it when you factor in the risk of a fire actually happening and the loss if there was one.

Yes to really fire proof the room it would be expensive. Although I'm not quite sure how quickly LMG would be able to recover if they lost all their servers even with backups it would take quite some time to get replacements going since their workflow requires the servers for rendering, ingest, storage, ... all of which are custom configurations.

 

Simply putting the UPS outside the tiny room would at least mitigate damage in the event the batteries get involved with the 100A AC circuit as the outer wear house has much more clear space to allow for the gases/fire to safely dissipate the tiny server room would become a firebox in an instant if the UPS catastrophically failed. 

 

I wonder does LMG have a disaster prep plan on how to continue making videos if say there was no server room due to a fire there.

[CommanderRykerHaunSolo]

On 2/19/2016 at 7:52 AM, bindydad123 said:

So did Linus media group actually purchased this ups

no they stole it