In our digitally driven era, data centers form the backbone of modern businesses. With our comprehensive experience in automation technology, we provide the right solutions for designing, fine-tuning, and maintaining these critical infrastructures. Whether you're building a state-of-the-art data center or aiming to boost the performance and efficiency of your existing facilities, Beckhoff’s range of components and solutions are designed to guide you through every step of this process.
Our commitment to innovation, security, and scalability ensures that your data center not only meets current requirements but is prepared for the ever-evolving landscape of digital technology. We offer reliable, sustainable solutions that specifically cater to your business's unique demands.
Data center automation
Energy monitoring and power quality tracking are vital for data centers for a multitude of reasons: cost efficiency, resource allocation, capacity planning, environmental concerns, reliability, predictive maintenance, and regulatory compliance. Monitoring energy use helps to identifying inefficiencies and lowers operational expenses. It also ensures that resources are distributed properly to prevent overload and maintain uptime. Energy monitoring helps data centers manage their environmental impact by reducing energy consumption and adopting sustainable practices. Power quality monitoring detects issues such as voltage fluctuations, which allows equipment failures to be prevented. It also provides early warnings for equipment problems, thus reducing downtime risk and assuring compliance with regulatory standards.
PC-based control completes the power measurement loop from sensor to cloud, thereby simplifying energy management methods and improving the availability of systems and data centers. Permanent, system-integrated power measurement allows users to perform extensive inline analyses to detect deviations and take quick action to correct them.
Data centers are under pressure to reduce their environmental impact, and HVAC monitoring helps them to adopt eco-friendly practices. It regulates temperature and humidity in order to prevent equipment from overheating and failure. Monitoring HVAC energy usage allows centers to identify energy-saving opportunities, thus reducing costs. Effective HVAC control also boosts air quality, benefiting both the equipment and personnel. HVAC redundancy and backup systems prevent system failures and assure compliance with regulations, which is vital for a safe working environment.
TwinCAT 3 Building Automation provides a comprehensive package of software function blocks for building automation that covers the entire range of functions for HVAC control. This significantly simplifies the implementation of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning technology. Functions such as summer night cooling, summer compensation, backup operation, and time schedulers are also available. With the help of the HVAC modules, further energy-saving possibilities can be explored via occupancy-dependent control of technical systems
Beckhoff provides an extensive range of fieldbus components for all common I/O and fieldbus systems along with a set of connectivity options, so that the best bus system can be selected for the application. The open system supports all common data transmission protocols, which ensures good interoperability with 3rd party systems.
Integrated controller redundancy increases system availability, which plays a crucial role in the data center industry. Measures to increase this include using redundant architectures to safeguard against failure in individual control components. For redundant control operation, TwinCAT Controller Redundancy is available.
This system-integrated software solution allows two standard industrial PCs to be operated as redundant controllers that both run the same PLC program. An additional high-performance network connection between the two controls provides the necessary data synchronization. If one controller fails, the second controller seamlessly takes over, preventing system downtime and data loss.
Technology highlights for data centers
Intelligent building automation with PC-based control
PC-based control enables integrated automation of all systems on a single platform: HVAC, room automation, remote maintenance, energy data acquisition, and operation and monitoring. To this end, we offer an extensive toolkit of hard- and software components. Robust industrial or embedded PCs with TwinCAT automation software incorporate PLC, visualization, safety technology, and measurement tasks. Beckhoff I/O systems log data from all sensors and actuators. Our automation technology supports all common media and building technology protocols and interfaces and can therefore address all industry-typical devices and systems. Various TwinCAT software libraries are available for diagnostic functions such as intelligent energy monitoring.
Your advantages with PC-based control:
- cost-effectiveness: from investment to implementation to usage
- sustainability: today's technology for tomorrow's requirements
- networking: all information available on one platform
- flexibility: to respond to users' individual needs
- high availability: through open standards
High-speed communication for data centers
EtherCAT was launched by Beckhoff in 2003 and made available as an open automation technology standard. With cycle times well below 1 ms, outstanding synchronization accuracy, flexible topology selection, extensive diagnostics, and simple configuration, EtherCAT is ideal for data centers. More than 7,000 companies worldwide have joined forces in the EtherCAT Technology Group (ETG), the world's largest industrial fieldbus user organization.
EtherCAT highlights for data centers:
- extremely fast cycle times for precise and efficient processes
- large selection of EtherCAT-compatible sensors and actuators on the market
- flexible connection of other fieldbus systems, such as CANopen, IO-Link, and PROFINET
Integrated automation with TwinCAT
TwinCAT 3 automation software integrates all engineering and runtime processes and features a consistent development environment for executing all control tasks in building automation. You can choose the programming method that is best suited to your application or combine languages based on the application and skill set. Microsoft Visual Studio is used as the standard programming workbench as it supports different version management systems and simplifies team-based programming. PLC languages in accordance with IEC 61131-3 with object-oriented programming are also supported.
TwinCAT highlights for data centers:
- TwinCAT 3 Building Automation: Package for building automation functions
- TwinCAT 3 Lighting Solution: Software for lighting management
- TwinCAT Analytics: Package with tools for predictive maintenance, improved diagnostics, and extensive remote maintenance options
