The number of mission critical and data center installations is rapidly increasing and these facilities are adopting technology that provides more redundancy and scalability than ever before. Using smaller generators with integrated paralleling provides easily modular growth and typically much higher probability of carrying the loads. It was this backup power technology that officials from University of Utah in Salt Lake City turned to protect its sensitive data when it was planning its new data center, which opened in 2012. The 74,000-sq-ft Tier III data center facility consolidated seven different standalone data centers across the university campus. Ultimately, it is intended to house data from nearly all campus entities, including University of Utah Health Care and Health Sciences, and the various academic departments. The current data center is the first phase of a project expected to expand as the university’s data needs grow.
As part of this project, the university issued an RFP to select a backup power solution.