I-Teco designed and built a data center for PKK Milander

2021: Building a Data Center

On October 1, 2021, I-Teco announced that together with PKK Milander JSC it had implemented a project to build a data center. The project was implemented within the framework of the program "Digitalization of Industry" of the Industrial Development Fund (group ВЭБ.РФ) to support initiatives aimed at the development of fixed assets of enterprises and digitalization of production. The program provides for a reduction in the interest rate on the loan to 1% per annum, provided that a system integrator is involved as a key executor, which meets the Fund's criteria and allows ensuring the quality of the work performed and rational use of the loan funds.

Data center "PKK Milander" installation of chillers

According to the company, one of the products sold by the enterprise is a chipset for intelligent electricity meters. The use of various solutions and digital technologies in metering devices based on these microcircuits reduces the volume of electricity theft, data and readings of energy consumed are collected automatically, which reduces the costs of energy consumers and increases investments in their own infrastructure from profit. In addition, Milander chips are used in various industrial and household appliances. In 2020, compared to 2019, the volume of sales of products for the civilian market increased by 73%.

Data center "PKK Milander" route

Solving the challenges of developing the company's business, optimizing the complexity of projects and, at the same time, reducing the timing of their implementation leads to the need to organize a modern, reliable and fault-tolerant IT infrastructure. At the time of the decision to build its own data center, Milander computing equipment was located in several disparate server rooms. This prevented the ability to quickly change the IT enterprise to the requirements of the business, significantly complicated the administration and management of the IT infrastructure, created problems of protecting project information - the main asset of the enterprise's intellectual property.

To build a data center, I-Teco was chosen as a system integrator, which has the necessary technological expertise and meets the criteria of the Industrial Development Fund, which reduced the cost of servicing the loan.

The technological complexity of the project is due to the strict and specific requirements for the infrastructure being implemented, as well as the need to accommodate the data centers already owned by Milander in the basement of the building of the Research Institute of Physical Problems in Zelenograd.

The location of the data center at a depth of 7 meters required physical protection from any negative factors, from the threat of penetration of unauthorized persons, to the threat of flooding with groundwater, leaks of the heating, water supply and sewerage system of the building, protection from falling objects on the roof of the data center, damage to enclosing structures, etc. For this, physical security circuits were created, drainage channels and pits were made along the perimeter of the data center. The applied design solutions reliably protected the equipment inside the data center.

Due to the need to build a data center in a functioning building in the city center, refrigeration machines could be installed only on the roof, which required to extend coolant pipelines from the basement (to a height of more than 40 meters), perform partial repair of the roof and place unloading frames on it, lift chillers and pump groups to the roof, perform separation on heat exchangers of external parts of routes (coolant - glycol solution to provide operation up to -40 ° С) and internal parts of routes (coolant - prepared water). At the same time, two mutually redundant independent cold supply circuits of the data center were created to ensure the reliability and possibility of performing planned preventive repairs and maintenance of the systems without stopping the data center. With a similar level of redundancy, a data center power supply system is made, connected to distribution substations by two independent feeders. The project also provides for an autonomous mode of operation of the data center in the event of large-scale accidents on power supply networks. For this, the use of DGP is provided.

As a result of the project, Milander received a modern data center with redundancy of main subsystems according to the N + N scheme and auxiliary ones according to the N + 1 scheme. The final reliability of the data center meets the requirements of the Uptime Institute for Tier III level. After the deployment of information systems for designing and managing production processes in this data center, Milander will receive not only all the necessary tools for fast R&D, but also the possibility of leasing its data center capacity to partner enterprises for the implementation of joint projects of the full cycle in the framework of technology cooperation. This will ensure the continuity of not only your own business processes, but also all critical business processes within the framework of the created industrial cooperation.