questions about Symmetra 40K and 80K UPSes

[dgoldsmith_apc]

We have a computer room that currently has 7 racks each of which has 2 SmartUPS 3U 3000VA 30A 125V rack-mountable UPSes. (One rack has only one) All of our current IT equipment uses 120V. Our current individual UPSes provide an aggregate of 39000 VA and take up 39U of rack space. Based on the power consumption numbers from our PDUs, we only use about 13000VA. We have a 200A 3-phase 208V/120V panel in the room. The 3-phase power was an initial requirement for our Liebert AC.

We are running out of physical space and cooling capacity and are working on a plan to go to blades, virtualization and a SAN to reduce both our equipment footprint and our overall power consumption. The blade hardware will require 208V. It can use either single-phase or 3-phase. I've been researching the Symmetra PX product and think that it will do what we need. Some of my questions at this time are:

1) If we provide 3-phase input power to the Symmetra UPS, how many input circuits are required? Just one or one per Symmetra 10K power module? If only one is needed, can you use two and does it make sense to provide a second so if you need to replace a circuit breaker at the panel, the UPS is still getting power from a second circuit?

2) The 40kVA frame can take 1-4 power modules and 1-4 battery banks and they appear to all get installed in one rack. If you exceed 40kVA, can you expand this to an 80kVA system by adding a battery enclosure, moving batteries from the UPS frame over to the battery frame and then adding more power modules or does the 40kVA model max out and you would need to replace it with a 80kVA UPS frame?

3) Various whips are available that provide 208V 3-phase and there are APC PDUs to plug in that can provide 208 or 120V output circuits for equipment. Are there any whips that provide 120V directly?

Thanks,
David Goldsmith

[Anonymous user · Accepted solution]

Hi Guys

I have also a question regarding this 40KVA and 80KVA, is it true that the Symmetra PX 40KVA the Static Switch is not hot-swappable? but for Symmetra PX 80KVA is hot-swappble..

Thanks

[cmarler_apc]

I think the SYBT4 batteries and SY10KF power modules were interchangeable from the SY40K40F 40KW Symettra PX to the SY80K80F 80KW Symettra PX systems.

We are upgrading from a 40 to an 80 and plan to re-use the power modules and batteries doing a forklift replacement of the PX and XR frames and InfraStruXure PDU.

[Anonymous user]

I just went through this same scenario. The static switch is not interchangeable. We were able to use the power modules, batteries, whips, and breakers. The APC FSE that was out to install thought the XR frame was as well, but we are on a generator so we didn’t need the extra batteries.

Hope this helps.

[cmarler_apc]

Thanks! That's right, the static switch is not interchangeable for the same reason the battery frames aren't. Caution for those reading this thread.

The XR extended run battery frames for a 40KW Symettra PX are not compatible with the 80KW Symettra PX. If you look at the part numbers for the empty frames you'll notice a difference between the two part numbers, then when you think about it, it gets obvious. The 80KW UPS system is going to be putting out twice the power, so the copper has to be bigger in the 80KW battery frames as well as the static bypass switches for the two different units, which is why it's not interchangeable either.

The Power modules and batteries themselves are a different story though. The connections to those are universal between the 40 and the 80.
It is really cool the UPS modules and batteries, the things the user can replace and are hot swappable, work interchangeably for both systems.

[dgoldsmith_apc]

I believe I have answered my question #2. The 40kW battery frame can only take up to 4 10kW power modules plus an optional redundant module but I could add additional battery frames to extended the runtime of the UPS if needed.

Based on looking at what our utility power feed can provide (72 KW), the capacity of our backup generator (60KW) and the cooling capacity of our AC units (5 tons => 17.5 KW) , a SY20K40F with a redundant power module will provide slightly more than the maximum power draw we can cool.

An additional question I have is how are the whips attached to the UPS frame? I've downloaded all of the Symmetra PX 40kW docs I found on APC's site and don't seem to have found this information. Are the whips just wired in to lugs in the UPS frame or are there circuit breakers in the UPS frame or some other method?

Thanks,
David Goldsmith

[BillP]

1) If we provide 3-phase input power to the Symmetra UPS, how many input circuits are required? Just one or one per Symmetra 10K power module? If only one is needed, can you use two and does it make sense to provide a second so if you need to replace a circuit breaker at the panel, the UPS is still getting power from a second circuit?

The 40k is a single 3ph input only. The 80k can have a 2nd feed, but its for the bypass input. An ATS would be required upstream from the UPS in order to give it an alternate source while one is taken down.

2) The 40kVA frame can take 1-4 power modules and 1-4 battery banks and they appear to all get installed in one rack. If you exceed 40kVA, can you expand this to an 80kVA system by adding a battery enclosure, moving batteries from the UPS frame over to the battery frame and then adding more power modules or does the 40kVA model max out and you would need to replace it with a 80kVA UPS frame?

The 40k and 80k are 2 different frames and can not be converted to each other. The batteries and power modules are not interchangeable.

3) Various whips are available that provide 208V 3-phase and there are APC PDUs to plug in that can provide 208 or 120V output circuits for equipment. Are there any whips that provide 120V directly?

Yes single phase whips are available (and single pole breakers to feed them).





let us know if you need anything else!

[dgoldsmith_apc]

Updating setup info: Our current power setup is we have a 200A 208V/120V 3phase utility feed and a 60KW 3phase backup generator. Both of these feeds go to an automatic transfer switch (ATS) which then feeds our panel. We have individual single-pole 120V 30A circuits that are used for individual rack mounted 3U 3000VA SmartUPS, two UPSes per rack. Much of our computer equipment has two power supplies and so draws power from the 2 distinct UPS-protected circuits dropped to that rack. Some equipment has only one power supply and is connected to just one UPS. The aggregate UPS capacity is 36 kVA or 28.8 kW (non power factor corrected devices). Our IT equipment currently pulls about 13 kW of power. Looking to add blade servers which will require 208V or 208V 3phase that will add to power load initially but then older equipment should be retired as we virtualize the servers. Total cooling capacity is about 17.5 kW so any solution with an aggregate of 20kW or so should suffice to completely replace our individual UPSes.

If I go with a single Symmetra PX 40K UPS with 3 10kW power modules (for N+1) and 2-4 battery modules, I understand that I can survive the failure of any one power module or any one battery module. Are their other components in the UPS frame or the switch module that if they failed would cause the complete loss of the sole Symmetra UPS?

Do I need to look at having two Symmetra PX 4K UPSes (each with at least 2 10K power modules) in order to have UPS redundancy?

If the 80K UPS can accept a second input for bypass mode, would that continue to provide power in case of UPS failure or if their was a problem with the primary circuit breaker in the feed panel?

Also, the Symmetra PX UPSes seem to be just UPS/battery but the Infrustructure solutions seem to include a panel with circuit breakers in the UPS frame. Does the Symmetra have individual circuit breakers in it or do you need to take outputs from a Symmetra and feed them to new downstream distribution panels and then add the appropriate circuit breakers?

Would redundant Smart-VT UPSes be another option I should be looking at?

I'll definitely be giving APC a call next week to talk to a sales engineer but am trying to find out as much as I can ahead of time.

Thanks,
Dave

[BillP]

The PX 40k actually can have up to five 10kW PMs for N+1 redundancy. The whips connect to the PDU (which is connected to the primary and secondary of the UPS). The PDU includes the output distribution panel(s) that the whips connect to. The static switch module is only used for transferring to static bypass, so if it fails it does not prohibit the UPS from transferring to battery operation. With the 80k PX, when used with a dual feed, if the main input is lost the UPS will run on battery until it hits low DC shutdown. At this point it will transfer to bypass if bypass is available, else it will shutdown. The SmartUPS VT is only redundant if you ran them in parallel. The UPS's and bypass panel would have to be designed through sales.

[Anonymous user]

We have a similar sized data center in which we installed a Symmetra PX 40K.

You need to get an APC engineer out to meet with you. There are way too many variables. We have 1- 480v, 80 amp circuit feeding our Symmetra with a transformer stepping it down to 208V. This covers all of the power modules. You can expand batteries (ie, runtime) but not beyond 40K. The way we see it, if we need to go beyond 40K, we will get another 40K Symmetra on another circuit and get some redundancy for critical systems. You plug PDUs into the whips. You can get various outlet configurations on the whips. Each whip is attached to a breaker on the Symmetra. We have an EMC CX4 SAN and have two whips to that rack with two 220v PDUs for the SAN. 3-phase PDUs have banks of outlets for each leg, leg 1, leg 2 and leg 3. (3-phase, remember) You want to balance the load across the legs.