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How Data Center Infrastructure
Management Software Improves
Planning and Cuts Operational Costs
White Paper 107
Revision 0


by Torben Karup Nielsen and Dennis Bouley




                                                              Contents
    > Executive summary                                       Click on a section to jump to it

                                                              Introduction                       2
    Business executives are challenging their IT staffs to
    convert data centers from cost centers into producers     Planning: Effect / Impact of
    of business value. Data centers can make a significant                                       3
                                                              decisions
    impact to the bottom line by enabling the business to
    respond more quickly to market demands. This paper        Operations: Completing more
                                                                                                 6
    demonstrates, through a series of examples, how data      tasks in less time
    center infrastructure management software tools can       Analysis: Identifying
    simplify operational processes, cut costs, and speed up   operational strengths and          10
    information delivery.                                     weaknesses

                                                              Conclusion                         13

                                                              Resources                          14
How Data Center Physical Infrastructure Management Software
                                                                               Improves Planning and Cuts Operational Costs




Introduction                    According to the Uptime Institute (a division of the 451 Group) the market for data center
                                infrastructure management systems will grow from $500 Million in 2010 to $7.5 Billion by
                                2020. 1 IT and business executives have realized that hundreds of thousands of dollars in
                                energy and operational costs can be saved by improved physical infrastructure planning, by
                                minor system reconfiguration, and by small process changes.

                                The systems which allow management to leverage these savings consist of modern data
                                center physical infrastructure (i.e., power and cooling) management software tools. Legacy
                                reporting systems, designed to support traditional data centers, are no longer adequate for
                                new “agile” data centers that need to manage constant capacity changes and dynamic loads.

                                A surprising number of small and medium data center operators believe that they can
                                manage their data center without physical infrastructure management tools. One operator
                                who only managed 15 racks at a small manufacturing firm, for example, felt that the data
                                center operations “tribal knowledge” he had acquired over the years could help him handle
                                any threatening situation. However, over time, his 15 racks became much denser. His
                                energy bills went up and his cooling and power systems drifted out of balance. At one point,
                                when he added a new server, he overloaded a branch circuit and took down an entire rack.

                                New management software Planning & Implementation tools (see Figure 1) improve IT room
       Link to resource         allocation of power and cooling (planning), provide rapid impact analysis when a portion of
       APC White Paper 104      the IT room fails (operations), and leverage historical data to improve future IT room perfor-
Classification of Data Center   mance (analysis). These three types of Planning & Implementation tools–planning, opera-
Operations Technology (OT)      tions, and analysis–are each explained in the following sections this paper. For a description
Management Tools                of data center physical infrastructure software tools that exist within other Operations
                                Technology (OT) subsets and subsystems see APC White Paper 104, Classification of Data
                                Center Operations Technology (OT) Management Tools.


                                                     Data Center Operations Technology (OT) subsets*



                                                                  Monitoring &                Planning &                    Data 
                                        Dashboard                                           Implementation
                                                                  Automation                                              Collection

Figure 1
The software tools dis-
cussed in this paper belong
to the Planning & Imple-
mentation OT subset
                                    Subsystems
                                    (partial list)   >         IT room workflow / IT  room capacity management / 
                                                                      IT room asset & lifecycle management

                                     Sample
                                      Tools          >          Planning tools / Operations tools / Analytics tools

                                              * See APC White Paper 104, Classification of Data Center Operations Technology (OT) 
                                              Management Tools for a comprehensive description of OT subsets and subsystems. 


                                1
                                    Andy Lawrence, The 451 Group, Data Center Infrastructure Management: Consolidation, But Not Yet,
                                    December 7, 2010


                                APC by Schneider Electric                                                 White Paper 107      Rev 0   2
How Data Center Physical Infrastructure Management Software
                                                               Improves Planning and Cuts Operational Costs

                     Some data center managers were never sold on first generation physical infrastructure
                     management tools because the tools were limited in scope and involved considerable human
                     intervention. These first generation tools would generate a pre-loaded list of devices and
                     warn that a CRAC unit inlet temperature had exceeded an established threshold. The
                     operator would have to determine on his own what equipment was affected by the error. The
                     tools were not capable of generating a correlation between physical infrastructure device and
                     server. Nor were these tools capable of initiating actions to prevent downtime, such as
                     speeding up fans to dissipate a hot spot.

                     New, second generation management tools are designed to identify and resolve issues with a
                     minimum amount of human intervention. These more intelligent tools also enable IT to inform
                     the lines of business of the consequences of their actions before server provisioning deci-
                     sions are made. Business decisions that result in higher energy consumption in the data
                     center, for example, will impact carbon footprint and carbon tax. Charge backs for energy
                     consumption are also possible with these new tools and can alter the way decisions are
                     made by aligning energy usage to business outcomes.




Planning:            Modern planning software tools Illustrate, through a graphical user interface, the current
                     physical state of the data center and simulate the effect of future physical equipment adds,
Effect / impact of   moves, and changes. This capability provides answers to some common planning questions
decisions            (see Figure 2). For example, modern planning tools can predict the impact of a new server
                     on power and cooling distribution. Planning software tools also calculate the impact of moves
                     and changes on data center space, and on power and cooling capacities.




                          Common questions answered by planning tools:

                          • Where do I place my next server?
Figure 2                  • Will I still have power or cooling redundancy under fault or     
Common planning
                            maintenance conditions?
questions                 • Do I need to spread out my blade servers to get reliable 
                            operations?
                          • How will a new server impact the existing branch circuit?
                          • What will the impact of new equipment be on my redundancy and 
                            safety margins?
                          • Does the existing power and cooling equipment have the capacity 
                            to accommodate new technologies? 



                     Symptoms of poor planning
                     The following examples illustrate the kinds of issues that develop as a result of poor planning:

                       • A recent power and cooling assessment at a data center revealed numerous hotspots at
                          the floor level where it should have been cold. Other areas were cold where they
                          should have been hot. Why? Although the data center had enough kilowatts of capaci-
                          ty, no real planning had taken place when it came to the placement of equipment. The
                          air distribution was insufficient, even though the bulk capacity was available.



                     APC by Schneider Electric                                       White Paper 107     Rev 0   3
How Data Center Physical Infrastructure Management Software
                                                                         Improves Planning and Cuts Operational Costs

                                 • A rack of servers was lost when an IT administrator unintentionally overloaded an al-
                                    ready maxed-out power strip.
                                 • Drives and memory removed from servers which had been purchased for an install
                                    project were misappropriated for another manager's project. No monitoring tool was in
                                    place to record activity such as removal of equipment from a rack. Since no automated
                                    tracking of rack assets occurred, the project planning was flawed. When the day of the
                                    install arrived project resources had been flown in at significant expense. Unfortunately,
                                    they wasted most of their day trying to locate misappropriated equipment.
                                 • A large manufacturing firm virtualized their data center and consolidated their most
                                    critical business applications to a cluster of servers. Because they were using the fai-
                                    lover mechanism of their virtualization platform (ability to migrate their VMs), they felt
                                    protected from hardware failure. Unfortunately, in their planning, they had not recog-
                                    nized that each of the servers was dependent on the same UPS. This meant that when
                                    the UPS failed, no UPS protected servers were available to migrate to.



                               Understanding the impact of failures and changes
                               Business executives and data center operators share the goal of maintaining operational
                               integrity even when failures occur in the data center. Insight into the impact of failures helps
                               business management feel secure about business process availability. Data center operators
                               must also respond to failures or prevent failures from occurring. Planning tools help maintain
                               business continuity.

                               Modern planning software tools perform the following functions:

                                 • Provide graphical representations of IT equipment and its location in the rack (This frees
                                    the operator from having to either pour over spreadsheets to find this information, or to
                                    physically have to be present in the data center.)
                                 • Visually display the impact of pending moves and changes on power capacity and
                                    cooling distribution (see Figure 4). (This spares the operator from having to engage in



“
                                    complex mathematical calculations and from potentially committing some serious errors
     Business executives and        that result in unanticipated downtime.)
data center operators share
the goal of maintaining          • Simulate the consequences of power and cooling device failure on IT equipment for
operational integrity even          identification of critical business application impacts (This provides an up- front assess-
when failures occur in the          ment of risk, based on scientific calculation, rather than by making decisions based only




           ”
data center.                        on “gut feel”.)
                                 • Take into account rack and floor tile weight limits (This avoids the disruptive situation of
                                    compromised rack integrity or having a rack crash through a stressed out raised floor.)
                                 • Simulate cooling scenarios in the data center with CFD approximation (This produces
                                    an airflow analysis in seconds as opposed to an actual CFD analysis that would take
                                    days and require large quantities of data input.)
                                 • Generate recommended installation locations for rack-mount IT equipment. The loca-
                                    tion selection is based on available power, cooling, space capacity, and network ports.
                                    (This helps to avoid the problem of overloaded branch circuits or hot spots.)


                               Planning tools improve data center operational efficiency and create an environment for
                               process improvements. Consider the traditional scenario where an operator is trying to
                               determine whether power capacity that was just exceeded on a rack is only an anomaly or a
                               developing trend. He goes by gut feel. If he is wrong, a breaker trips when power capacity in
                               a rack is exceeded. This means that any servers downstream of that breaker running
                               mission critical applications would be shut down. The planning tools, on the other hand, can
                               simulate the allocation of the workloads in the rack when a threshold is breached. The power
                               usage of each device in the rack is measured so that load balancing decisions can be made
                               based on scientific data.


                               APC by Schneider Electric                                        White Paper 107    Rev 0    4
How Data Center Physical Infrastructure Management Software
                                                                      Improves Planning and Cuts Operational Costs



                             Modern physical infrastructure tools send out an alarm from the rack prior to a breaker
                             tripping. This early warning system provides the operator with the opportunity to make
                             adjustments before downtime occurs. Reports are generated for minimum, maximum, and
                             average usage over time for that rack and for each rack in the data center (see Figure 3). If
                             a rack gets close to an overcapacity threshold, predictive simulation options can be generat-
                             ed and reviewed to determine the best way to alleviate the situation. Planning implies the
                             ability to simulate outcomes, to capacity plan, and to manage inventory and workflow.




Figure 3
Collection of data for
real-time simulation
(sample screen extracted
from the APC by Schneider
Electric InfraStruxure
Capacity application)




                             Consider the scenario of how an operator determines where to place the next server. In the
                             traditional data center the operator would perform a manual check on racks looking for some
                             free space. He might feel behind the rack to check if it’s too hot. He would then take his new
                             server, place it in the rack, plug it in, and hope for the best.




Figure 4
Planning tools can be used
to analyze the impact of
moves and changes on the
data center power and
cooling (sample screen
extracted from the APC by
Schneider Electric
InfraStruxure Operations
application)




                             APC by Schneider Electric                                      White Paper 107    Rev 0    5
How Data Center Physical Infrastructure Management Software
                                                                          Improves Planning and Cuts Operational Costs

                                As the modern operations management tools are constantly collecting data from the various
                                devices in the racks, the tools are capable of utilizing the collected data to perform real-time
                                simulation of server placement based on power, cooling, space, and weight requirements of
                                the server (see Figure 4). The tools then generate a work order to place the server in the
                                correct rack.




“
    The deployment of           The deployment of modern planning tools can result in hundreds of man hours saved per
modern planning tools can       year and thousands of dollars saved in averted downtime costs. These benefits extend to
result in hundreds of man       new private cloud environments. Host selection and deployment are critical to capitalizing on
hours saved per year and        the benefits of a private cloud infrastructure. The amount of data and calculations needed to
thousands of dollars saved in   make informed choices is significant. The planning tools serve as a guide in order to avoid



                        ”
averted downtime costs.         incidences of downtime or lost data.

                                While planning software helps to improve the efficiency of operations, access to data center
                                planning data can also help convince senior management that an upgrade to a data center
                                can be justified (see the “Analytics: Identifying operational strengths and weaknesses”
                                section of this paper). Lack of useful reporting from management systems makes it difficult to
                                justify budgets for data center infrastructure improvements. Use of advanced planning tools
                                can also help data center professionals prepare for audits and other forms of compliance.

                                New graphical user interfaces make the management tools easier to work with. Now racks
                                can be viewed in three dimensions or from top down or from rack front (see Figure 5). The
                                management tools correlate data between CRAC units, the PDUs, and the UPSs. The entire
                                chain is monitored. The tools relate the rack being cooled by a CRAC unit to the IT equip-
                                ment within those racks. Therefore, the impact of a physical infrastructure failure (such as a
                                failing CRAC unit) on the housed IT asset can be predicted.




Figure 5
Front view of row of IT
racks within the IT room
(sample screen extracted
from the APC by Schneider
Electric InfraStruxure
Operations application)




                                APC by Schneider Electric                                         White Paper 107    Rev 0    6
How Data Center Physical Infrastructure Management Software
                                                                     Improves Planning and Cuts Operational Costs



Operations:                New automated workflow tools allow operators to assign work orders, reserve space, track
                           status, and extract an audit trail for complete visibility and history to the change cycle when
Completing                 equipment goes in and out. Figure 6 highlights the types of operational questions answered
more tasks in              by modern physical infrastructure management tools.

less time
                           Symptoms of poor operations
                           The following examples illustrate the kinds of issues that develop as a result of lack of usable
                           physical infrastructure operations software tools:

                             • In a large financial data center, the provisioning and installation of servers became so
                                complex that only highly paid engineers were able to perform the task
                             • A veteran data center manager based in New York was concerned about the provision-
                                ing of a server in his new London data center. He felt the employees based in London
                                were relatively inexperienced and that they would not know where to properly place the
                                server. He flew from New York to London in order to place a Post-It® note on the rack
                                position he wanted reserved, just to make sure no mistakes were made. He wanted to
                                make sure the power and cooling systems could support the additional servers.
                             • One owner of a mid-size data center located in Florida had been intentionally oversizing
                                his cooling capacity for years in order to ensure that the data center would not run out of
                                cooling. He also could not account for the origin of a number of servers in his data cen-
                                ter. It was determined that he was over cooling even more than what he had originally
                                thought and that 10% of his servers being cooled were at very low utilization.
                             • A finance industry data center operator was tasked with installing nine new servers. He
                                located a rack in the data center that was nearly empty, and installed the servers into
                                the rack. He checked that all the servers turned on, and when they all initialized, he
                                considered the installation a success. It wasn't until the next day that he noticed the
                                UPS which was feeding the new servers had switched to bypass. As it turned out, the
                                overnight load on the newly installed servers had peaked thereby overloading the UPS
                                and placing hundreds of servers at risk.
                             • At a large healthcare industry data center containing both low density (with no redun-
                                dancy) and high density (with 2N redundancy) configurations, a low density server was
                                inadvertently installed in a high density rack. This error wasn't discovered until the time
                                came to decommission the server. In the end, running the server ended up costing
                                about 20 times more in electrical costs than was necessary.




                                     Common questions answered by operation tools:

                                     •   What is my current workflow?
Figure 6
                                     •   The data center has hot spots, how can I address this?
Key operations questions
                                     •   What is the overall health of my data center?
                                     •   I lost a fan on my CRAC, what do I do now?
                                     •   My power capacity is exceeded on a rack, what can I do?
                                     •   What is my PUE?




                           APC by Schneider Electric                                        White Paper 107    Rev 0    7
How Data Center Physical Infrastructure Management Software
                                                                    Improves Planning and Cuts Operational Costs

                          Modern operations software tools perform the following operations-related functions:

                            • Distribute and track single and three phase equipment power draw, ensuring all three
                               phases on the power system carry a balanced load (This means an operator becomes
                               less reliant on a vendor or on an electrician to determine power system load balances.)
                            • Illustrate power path–from UPS to rack to individual devices–within the rack, measured
                               load, and rack capacity (Rather than discovery through trial and error, this helps the op-
                               erator to immediately identify which servers will be affected if a particular rack or UPS
                               happens to fail.)
                            • Illustrate average and peak power usage by rack (This helps to justify decisions when
                               determining where to locate a new server.)
                            • Generate an audit trail for all changes to assets and work orders for a specified range of
                               time, including a record of alarms raised and alarms removed (When trying to determine
                               why a system failed, rather than relying on various individuals’ opinion of which equip-
                               ment was moved and when, the operator can utilize the system to provide the factual
                               evidence.)
                            • Identify excess capacity and indicates which devices can either be decommissioned or
                               used elsewhere (This can help save energy costs be reallocating underutilized IT room
                               assets.)
                            • Generate a PUE value on a daily basis and track historical PUE (This allows the opera-
                               tor to analyze whether management’s cost cutting, energy saving strategies are actually
                               working.)


                          Modern Planning & Implementation software management tools allow for improvements to
                          standard operational procedures. Figure 7 compares both traditional and improved
                          workflows regarding the loss of a fan on a CRAC unit. Figures 8 and 9 illustrate examples of
                          different approaches for managing data center energy consumption issues.



                                   Traditional approach

                                        Monitoring            Staff is notified 
                                                                                        New fan begins 
                                      system detects         and arranges for 
                                                                                          operation
                                     fan loss on CRAC          maintenance

                                     Human intervention:  high               Risk of downtime:  high

Figure 7
Traditional vs. modern             Updated approach
approach: CRAC fan loss
                             Monitoring system                  System identifies                Maintenance 
                            detects CRAC fan loss               specific servers at               repairs fan
                            / maintenance work                          risk
                              order generated


                                                                         At risk applications           Applications 
                                         Nearby fans speed                                               restored to 
                                        up to compensate for             moved to alternate 
                                                                                servers                original servers
                                                loss

                                     Human intervention:  low                Risk of downtime:  low



                          In a traditional approach, the human operator reasons in the following manner: “I have three
                          CRAC units and 15 racks. It’s CRAC #3 that is malfunctioning, so I only have to worry about


                          APC by Schneider Electric                                        White Paper 107      Rev 0     8
How Data Center Physical Infrastructure Management Software
                                                                                Improves Planning and Cuts Operational Costs

                                  the last 5 racks in my chain.” This human tribal knowledge calculation/correlation might work
                                  when only a limited number of racks need to be managed. However, as the IT room envi-
                                  ronments grow, the situation becomes less and less manageable. Hot spots and overloaded
                                  circuits occur when operators rely on their last recollection and / or on a series of traditional
                                  assumptions. This is when problems begin to occur. At the higher levels of complexity, the
                                  management tools perform the task much more efficiently and accurately than the human
                                  brain.

                                  The traditional method for tracking IT room equipment in/out logs involves either removal or
                                  installation of a device and then logging the device into a book (by a designated person).
                                  This procedure is followed for any device the size of a disk/tape and larger. All drive bays
                                  are audited nightly by security and if drives go missing, security reviews the access logs and
                                  server room security footage to see who might have taken them.

                                  Modern operations software can provide data center inventory information from a hand held
                                  device while on the data center floor. An integrated barcode scanner simplifies the task of
                                  implementing work orders and identifying equipment. Using a wireless network, server
                                  locations are automatically synchronized, and device and asset attributes are detailed.
                                  Searches can be run by equipment vendor name, model, and type. Information can also be
                                  exported to an Excel format.


                                  Consider a scenario where the data center operator is attempting to determine the overall



“
                                  health of the power and cooling physical infrastructure. In a traditional data center the
    Hot spots and overloaded      operator would have to measure and interpret the health of each individual device. This
circuits occur when operators     measurement information would have to be kept on spreadsheets. The data would have to
rely on their last recollection
                                  be manually aggregated for reporting.
and / or on a series of tradi-



                    ”
tional assumptions.
                                  Modern management tools are capable of 7x24 centralized device discovery, management,
                                  and monitoring. When problems occur, instant infrastructure alerts and alarms are triggered
                                  based on user defined thresholds and conditions. Reports and graphs are quickly generated
                                  to help diagnose the nature of the problem.



                                  Issue: Energy efficiency management
                                  Typical data centers are excessive consumers of energy. Historically, data center design and
                                  operations have been focused on reliability and capacity. This has led to the unfortunate
                                  situation where data centers have not been optimized for efficiency. In fact, it is difficult to
                                  identify any one place where a data center is engineered for efficiency, because independent
                                  decisions of equipment designers, system integrators, control programmers, installers,
                                  contractors, IT managers, and operators all contribute substantially to overall energy
                                  performance.

                                  Studies show that energy use is a substantial cost of IT operations, in some cases exceeding
                                  the cost of the IT hardware itself 2. This cost pressure, and the realization that data centers
                                  can be much more efficient in their use of energy, have influenced many data center opera-
                                  tors to lower energy consumption. Operators are ill equipped to measure energy consump-
                                  tion even though they are becoming accountable for it. Fortunately, new energy manage-
                                  ment tools are making their way into the suite of IT room management systems.




                                  2
                                      US Department of Energy, “Creating Energy Efficient Data Centers”, U.S. Department of Energy, May
                                      2007


                                  APC by Schneider Electric                                             White Paper 107     Rev 0    9
How Data Center Physical Infrastructure Management Software
                                                                     Improves Planning and Cuts Operational Costs



                                     Traditional approach

                                                               No changes made 
                                       Reduced data 
                                                               to  IT, power, and 
                                    center load at night
                                                                cooling systems

                                       Energy savings:  none


Figure 8
                                     Updated approach
Traditional vs. modern
approach: Load shifting               System detects                           Applications 
                                    reduced data center                      consolidated onto 
                                       load at night                              rack #1



                                                 Load shifts based on                       Rack #2 is turned off, 
                                                 power consumption                         thereby increasling the 
                                                         data                                  energy savings

                                     Energy savings:  high




                          These new tools enable IT room operators to support load shifting (see Figure 8). When
                          virtual machines migrate from zone to zone the management tools allow the power and
                          cooling to also move dynamically. Figures 8 and 9 provide two illustrations of how energy
                          management practices can reduce operational costs.



                                     Traditional approach

                                  Legacy system detects            Data center             Variable speed 
                                       lower load                 temperature            fans  in CRACS are 
                                  requirement  at night          allowed to rise           adjusted down

                                       Energy savings:  moderate
Figure 9
Traditional vs. modern
approach: Intelligent                Updated approach
temperature setting
                                       System detects                        Reduced cooling load 
                                         lower load                            reported to BMS 
                                    requirement at night                           system



                                                                                               BMS optimizes the 
                                                  Variable speed fans 
                                                                                             chiller by raising chilled 
                                                     in CRACS are 
                                                                                               water temperature
                                                    adjusted down

                                      Energy savings:  high




                          APC by Schneider Electric                                          White Paper 107       Rev 0   10
How Data Center Physical Infrastructure Management Software
                                                                    Improves Planning and Cuts Operational Costs




Analysis:                 The goal with analysis is to arrive at an optimal or realistic decision based on data. For
                          example, an audit trail can be generated for all changes to assets within the computer room.
Identifying               If a spike in power demand seems to occur on the same rack at the same time every night,
operational               and the spike is dangerously close to tripping a breaker threshold, then a decision can be
                          made to modify workflow so that the consumption peak for that rack can be reduced.
strengths and
weaknesses                Analysis of physical infrastructure operational data can also determine the cause of problems
                          (i.e., what is slow, what is costly). Combining analytics and predictive simulation is yet
                          another way the data center can help to generate business value. Figure 10 highlights the
                          types of questions that can be addressed through the use of modern data center physical
                          infrastructure management tools.

                          Performance reports track outages by rack, row, and power distribution zone. When servers
                          fail more frequently in one area, an underlying reason can be determined. Without a frame of
                          reference, the value of data center metrics is limited if the purpose of the operator is to raise
                          efficiency and reduce data center cost.




                                Common questions answered by analytics tools:

                                • What do I have in my data center? 
                                • Who has touched which equipment and when?
                                • Do I have stranded cooling and power capacity?
Figure 10                       • When will firmware have to be updated?
Key analytics questions         • By what date will the data center run out of power and cooling 
                                  capacity? What will run out first?
                                • When should batteries be charged on UPS?  
                                • When will the next large data center physical infrastructure 
                                  investment be necessary?
                                • How can I predict the need for future infrastructure, investments 
                                  and rollouts?



                          Modern analytics software tools perform the following functions:

                            • Identify discrepancies between planned energy usage, based on nameplate information,
                               and actual usage, based on actual power data (This helps operators plan more accurate
                               capacity forecasts which help influence budgeting and acquisition decisions.)
                            • Generate inventory reports organized by device type, age, manufacturer, and properties
                               of the device (This enables the operator to quickly identify underutilized assets, assets
                               out of warranty, and assets that need to be upgraded.)
                            • Generate energy usage reports (see Figure 11) by subsystem (This allows the opera-
                               tors to determine which racks or subsystems generate the most energy cost and to
                               benchmark whether energy consumption is increasing as a result of recent changes to
                               the IT room.)
                            • Provide details on enable the link of operating costs to charge backs for each business
                               unit user group (This allows the operator to modify the energy consumption behavior of
                               various business units and enables the business to make better decisions on which
                               technologies they deploy.)



                          APC by Schneider Electric                                        White Paper 107     Rev 0   11
How Data Center Physical Infrastructure Management Software
                                                                                    Improves Planning and Cuts Operational Costs




                                        Efficiency dashboard                                          Web-enabled interface
                                                                                              For easy integration with 3rd party web
                                                                                              page through application programming
                                                                                                          interface (API)




Figure 11
Energy consumption
analytics (sample screen
extracted from the APC by
Schneider Electric
InfraStruxure Energy
Efficiency application)



                                                  Energy efficiency calculation
                                        Current and historical PUE values based
                                         on the current IT load for a fact-based
                                                                                                 Subsystem energy losses
                                                                                            Insight into energy losses and cost of
                                        understanding of energy efficiency at the
                                                      facility level                          subsystems, with details of which
                                                                                             subsystem draws the greatest cost
                                © 2009 APC by Schneider E lec tric




                             When data center floor and rack space specifications are not coordinated with power, cooling,
                             power distribution, and cooling distribution capacities, the result is stranded capacity. This
                             concept can best be illustrated by a CEO who walks around the data center, sees
                             several racks that are only half full, and questions why the data center manager is
                             claiming that the data center is “at full capacity”.

                             Examples of stranded capacity in the data center include the following:

                               • An air conditioner has sufficient capacity but inadequate air distribution to the IT load
                               • A PDU has sufficient capacity but no available breaker positions
                               • Floor space is available but there is no remaining power
                               • Air conditioners are in the wrong location
                               • Some PDUs are overloaded while others are lightly loaded
                               • Some areas are overheated while others are cold

                             Stranded capacity is a frustrating capacity management problem for data center profession-
                             als. It is difficult to explain to users or management that a data center with 1 MW of installed
                             power and cooling can’t cool new blade servers when only operating at 200 kW of total load.

      Link to resource       An effective capacity management tool not only identifies and highlights stranded capacity,
      APC White Paper 150    but also helps prevent data center staff from creating the situation in the first place. For more
Power and Cooling Capacity   information on how to manage stranded capacity, see APC White Paper 150, Power and
Management for Data          Cooling Capacity Management for Data Centers.
Centers




                             APC by Schneider Electric                                                 White Paper 107       Rev 0      12
How Data Center Physical Infrastructure Management Software
                                                        Improves Planning and Cuts Operational Costs




Conclusion   With the challenges of higher-density computing, dynamic workloads, and the need for more
             efficient energy consumption, organizations require software that allows them to plan,
             operate at low cost, and analyze for workflow improvement. Only higher visibility, more
             control and improved automation can help deliver on the commitment of producing business
             value.

             Holistic management capabilities available today can enable data center professionals to
             maximize their capacity to control their energy costs and to advise the business on how to
             utilize IT assets more effectively. By sharing key data points, historical data, and asset
             tracking information, and by developing the ability to charge back users, the new Planning &
             Implementation tools allow users to take actions based upon data center business intelli-
             gence.




                      About the authors
                 Torben Karup Nielsen is a Principal Software Researcher on APC by Schneider Electric's
                 Data Center Software Research Team. He holds a master's degree in computer science and
                 mathematics from the University of Southern Denmark. He has worked extensively with data
                 center management and energy efficiency software as well as integration between data center
                 infrastructure management (DCIM), IT and workflow management systems.

                 Dennis Bouley is a Senior Research Analyst at APC by Schneider Electric's Data Center
                 Science Center. He holds bachelor’s degrees in journalism and French from the University of
                 Rhode Island and holds the Certificat Annuel from the Sorbonne in Paris, France. He has
                 published multiple articles in global journals focused on data center IT and physical infra-
                 structure environments and has authored several white papers for The Green Grid.




             APC by Schneider Electric                                           White Paper 107      Rev 0     13
How Data Center Physical Infrastructure Management Software
                                                                             Improves Planning and Cuts Operational Costs




Resources
Click on icon to link to resource



                                        Classification of Data Center Operations
                                        Technology (OT) Management Tools
         Browse all APC                 APC White Paper 104
         white papers
          whitepapers.apc.com
                                        Power and Cooling Capacity Management
                                        For Data Centers
                                        APC White Paper 150




                                        Power Sizing Calculator
                                        APC TradeOff Tool 1
         Browse all APC
         TradeOff Tools™                Energy Allocation Calculator
          tools.apc.com                 APC TradeOff Tool 2

                                        Energy Efficiency Calculator
                                        APC TradeOff Tool 6




                                             Contact us
                                       For feedback and comments about the content of this white paper:

                                           Data Center Science Center, APC by Schneider Electric
                                           DCSC@Schneider-Electric.com

                                       If you are a customer and have questions specific to your data center project:

                                             Contact your APC by Schneider Electric representative




                                    APC by Schneider Electric                                   White Paper 107   Rev 0   14

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WP107 How Data Center Management Software Improves Planning and Cuts OPEX

  • 1. How Data Center Infrastructure Management Software Improves Planning and Cuts Operational Costs White Paper 107 Revision 0 by Torben Karup Nielsen and Dennis Bouley Contents > Executive summary Click on a section to jump to it Introduction 2 Business executives are challenging their IT staffs to convert data centers from cost centers into producers Planning: Effect / Impact of of business value. Data centers can make a significant 3 decisions impact to the bottom line by enabling the business to respond more quickly to market demands. This paper Operations: Completing more 6 demonstrates, through a series of examples, how data tasks in less time center infrastructure management software tools can Analysis: Identifying simplify operational processes, cut costs, and speed up operational strengths and 10 information delivery. weaknesses Conclusion 13 Resources 14
  • 2. How Data Center Physical Infrastructure Management Software Improves Planning and Cuts Operational Costs Introduction According to the Uptime Institute (a division of the 451 Group) the market for data center infrastructure management systems will grow from $500 Million in 2010 to $7.5 Billion by 2020. 1 IT and business executives have realized that hundreds of thousands of dollars in energy and operational costs can be saved by improved physical infrastructure planning, by minor system reconfiguration, and by small process changes. The systems which allow management to leverage these savings consist of modern data center physical infrastructure (i.e., power and cooling) management software tools. Legacy reporting systems, designed to support traditional data centers, are no longer adequate for new “agile” data centers that need to manage constant capacity changes and dynamic loads. A surprising number of small and medium data center operators believe that they can manage their data center without physical infrastructure management tools. One operator who only managed 15 racks at a small manufacturing firm, for example, felt that the data center operations “tribal knowledge” he had acquired over the years could help him handle any threatening situation. However, over time, his 15 racks became much denser. His energy bills went up and his cooling and power systems drifted out of balance. At one point, when he added a new server, he overloaded a branch circuit and took down an entire rack. New management software Planning & Implementation tools (see Figure 1) improve IT room Link to resource allocation of power and cooling (planning), provide rapid impact analysis when a portion of APC White Paper 104 the IT room fails (operations), and leverage historical data to improve future IT room perfor- Classification of Data Center mance (analysis). These three types of Planning & Implementation tools–planning, opera- Operations Technology (OT) tions, and analysis–are each explained in the following sections this paper. For a description Management Tools of data center physical infrastructure software tools that exist within other Operations Technology (OT) subsets and subsystems see APC White Paper 104, Classification of Data Center Operations Technology (OT) Management Tools. Data Center Operations Technology (OT) subsets* Monitoring &  Planning & Data  Dashboard Implementation Automation Collection Figure 1 The software tools dis- cussed in this paper belong to the Planning & Imple- mentation OT subset Subsystems (partial list) > IT room workflow / IT  room capacity management /  IT room asset & lifecycle management Sample Tools > Planning tools / Operations tools / Analytics tools * See APC White Paper 104, Classification of Data Center Operations Technology (OT)  Management Tools for a comprehensive description of OT subsets and subsystems.  1 Andy Lawrence, The 451 Group, Data Center Infrastructure Management: Consolidation, But Not Yet, December 7, 2010 APC by Schneider Electric White Paper 107 Rev 0 2
  • 3. How Data Center Physical Infrastructure Management Software Improves Planning and Cuts Operational Costs Some data center managers were never sold on first generation physical infrastructure management tools because the tools were limited in scope and involved considerable human intervention. These first generation tools would generate a pre-loaded list of devices and warn that a CRAC unit inlet temperature had exceeded an established threshold. The operator would have to determine on his own what equipment was affected by the error. The tools were not capable of generating a correlation between physical infrastructure device and server. Nor were these tools capable of initiating actions to prevent downtime, such as speeding up fans to dissipate a hot spot. New, second generation management tools are designed to identify and resolve issues with a minimum amount of human intervention. These more intelligent tools also enable IT to inform the lines of business of the consequences of their actions before server provisioning deci- sions are made. Business decisions that result in higher energy consumption in the data center, for example, will impact carbon footprint and carbon tax. Charge backs for energy consumption are also possible with these new tools and can alter the way decisions are made by aligning energy usage to business outcomes. Planning: Modern planning software tools Illustrate, through a graphical user interface, the current physical state of the data center and simulate the effect of future physical equipment adds, Effect / impact of moves, and changes. This capability provides answers to some common planning questions decisions (see Figure 2). For example, modern planning tools can predict the impact of a new server on power and cooling distribution. Planning software tools also calculate the impact of moves and changes on data center space, and on power and cooling capacities. Common questions answered by planning tools: • Where do I place my next server? Figure 2 • Will I still have power or cooling redundancy under fault or      Common planning maintenance conditions? questions • Do I need to spread out my blade servers to get reliable  operations? • How will a new server impact the existing branch circuit? • What will the impact of new equipment be on my redundancy and  safety margins? • Does the existing power and cooling equipment have the capacity  to accommodate new technologies?  Symptoms of poor planning The following examples illustrate the kinds of issues that develop as a result of poor planning: • A recent power and cooling assessment at a data center revealed numerous hotspots at the floor level where it should have been cold. Other areas were cold where they should have been hot. Why? Although the data center had enough kilowatts of capaci- ty, no real planning had taken place when it came to the placement of equipment. The air distribution was insufficient, even though the bulk capacity was available. APC by Schneider Electric White Paper 107 Rev 0 3
  • 4. How Data Center Physical Infrastructure Management Software Improves Planning and Cuts Operational Costs • A rack of servers was lost when an IT administrator unintentionally overloaded an al- ready maxed-out power strip. • Drives and memory removed from servers which had been purchased for an install project were misappropriated for another manager's project. No monitoring tool was in place to record activity such as removal of equipment from a rack. Since no automated tracking of rack assets occurred, the project planning was flawed. When the day of the install arrived project resources had been flown in at significant expense. Unfortunately, they wasted most of their day trying to locate misappropriated equipment. • A large manufacturing firm virtualized their data center and consolidated their most critical business applications to a cluster of servers. Because they were using the fai- lover mechanism of their virtualization platform (ability to migrate their VMs), they felt protected from hardware failure. Unfortunately, in their planning, they had not recog- nized that each of the servers was dependent on the same UPS. This meant that when the UPS failed, no UPS protected servers were available to migrate to. Understanding the impact of failures and changes Business executives and data center operators share the goal of maintaining operational integrity even when failures occur in the data center. Insight into the impact of failures helps business management feel secure about business process availability. Data center operators must also respond to failures or prevent failures from occurring. Planning tools help maintain business continuity. Modern planning software tools perform the following functions: • Provide graphical representations of IT equipment and its location in the rack (This frees the operator from having to either pour over spreadsheets to find this information, or to physically have to be present in the data center.) • Visually display the impact of pending moves and changes on power capacity and cooling distribution (see Figure 4). (This spares the operator from having to engage in “ complex mathematical calculations and from potentially committing some serious errors Business executives and that result in unanticipated downtime.) data center operators share the goal of maintaining • Simulate the consequences of power and cooling device failure on IT equipment for operational integrity even identification of critical business application impacts (This provides an up- front assess- when failures occur in the ment of risk, based on scientific calculation, rather than by making decisions based only ” data center. on “gut feel”.) • Take into account rack and floor tile weight limits (This avoids the disruptive situation of compromised rack integrity or having a rack crash through a stressed out raised floor.) • Simulate cooling scenarios in the data center with CFD approximation (This produces an airflow analysis in seconds as opposed to an actual CFD analysis that would take days and require large quantities of data input.) • Generate recommended installation locations for rack-mount IT equipment. The loca- tion selection is based on available power, cooling, space capacity, and network ports. (This helps to avoid the problem of overloaded branch circuits or hot spots.) Planning tools improve data center operational efficiency and create an environment for process improvements. Consider the traditional scenario where an operator is trying to determine whether power capacity that was just exceeded on a rack is only an anomaly or a developing trend. He goes by gut feel. If he is wrong, a breaker trips when power capacity in a rack is exceeded. This means that any servers downstream of that breaker running mission critical applications would be shut down. The planning tools, on the other hand, can simulate the allocation of the workloads in the rack when a threshold is breached. The power usage of each device in the rack is measured so that load balancing decisions can be made based on scientific data. APC by Schneider Electric White Paper 107 Rev 0 4
  • 5. How Data Center Physical Infrastructure Management Software Improves Planning and Cuts Operational Costs Modern physical infrastructure tools send out an alarm from the rack prior to a breaker tripping. This early warning system provides the operator with the opportunity to make adjustments before downtime occurs. Reports are generated for minimum, maximum, and average usage over time for that rack and for each rack in the data center (see Figure 3). If a rack gets close to an overcapacity threshold, predictive simulation options can be generat- ed and reviewed to determine the best way to alleviate the situation. Planning implies the ability to simulate outcomes, to capacity plan, and to manage inventory and workflow. Figure 3 Collection of data for real-time simulation (sample screen extracted from the APC by Schneider Electric InfraStruxure Capacity application) Consider the scenario of how an operator determines where to place the next server. In the traditional data center the operator would perform a manual check on racks looking for some free space. He might feel behind the rack to check if it’s too hot. He would then take his new server, place it in the rack, plug it in, and hope for the best. Figure 4 Planning tools can be used to analyze the impact of moves and changes on the data center power and cooling (sample screen extracted from the APC by Schneider Electric InfraStruxure Operations application) APC by Schneider Electric White Paper 107 Rev 0 5
  • 6. How Data Center Physical Infrastructure Management Software Improves Planning and Cuts Operational Costs As the modern operations management tools are constantly collecting data from the various devices in the racks, the tools are capable of utilizing the collected data to perform real-time simulation of server placement based on power, cooling, space, and weight requirements of the server (see Figure 4). The tools then generate a work order to place the server in the correct rack. “ The deployment of The deployment of modern planning tools can result in hundreds of man hours saved per modern planning tools can year and thousands of dollars saved in averted downtime costs. These benefits extend to result in hundreds of man new private cloud environments. Host selection and deployment are critical to capitalizing on hours saved per year and the benefits of a private cloud infrastructure. The amount of data and calculations needed to thousands of dollars saved in make informed choices is significant. The planning tools serve as a guide in order to avoid ” averted downtime costs. incidences of downtime or lost data. While planning software helps to improve the efficiency of operations, access to data center planning data can also help convince senior management that an upgrade to a data center can be justified (see the “Analytics: Identifying operational strengths and weaknesses” section of this paper). Lack of useful reporting from management systems makes it difficult to justify budgets for data center infrastructure improvements. Use of advanced planning tools can also help data center professionals prepare for audits and other forms of compliance. New graphical user interfaces make the management tools easier to work with. Now racks can be viewed in three dimensions or from top down or from rack front (see Figure 5). The management tools correlate data between CRAC units, the PDUs, and the UPSs. The entire chain is monitored. The tools relate the rack being cooled by a CRAC unit to the IT equip- ment within those racks. Therefore, the impact of a physical infrastructure failure (such as a failing CRAC unit) on the housed IT asset can be predicted. Figure 5 Front view of row of IT racks within the IT room (sample screen extracted from the APC by Schneider Electric InfraStruxure Operations application) APC by Schneider Electric White Paper 107 Rev 0 6
  • 7. How Data Center Physical Infrastructure Management Software Improves Planning and Cuts Operational Costs Operations: New automated workflow tools allow operators to assign work orders, reserve space, track status, and extract an audit trail for complete visibility and history to the change cycle when Completing equipment goes in and out. Figure 6 highlights the types of operational questions answered more tasks in by modern physical infrastructure management tools. less time Symptoms of poor operations The following examples illustrate the kinds of issues that develop as a result of lack of usable physical infrastructure operations software tools: • In a large financial data center, the provisioning and installation of servers became so complex that only highly paid engineers were able to perform the task • A veteran data center manager based in New York was concerned about the provision- ing of a server in his new London data center. He felt the employees based in London were relatively inexperienced and that they would not know where to properly place the server. He flew from New York to London in order to place a Post-It® note on the rack position he wanted reserved, just to make sure no mistakes were made. He wanted to make sure the power and cooling systems could support the additional servers. • One owner of a mid-size data center located in Florida had been intentionally oversizing his cooling capacity for years in order to ensure that the data center would not run out of cooling. He also could not account for the origin of a number of servers in his data cen- ter. It was determined that he was over cooling even more than what he had originally thought and that 10% of his servers being cooled were at very low utilization. • A finance industry data center operator was tasked with installing nine new servers. He located a rack in the data center that was nearly empty, and installed the servers into the rack. He checked that all the servers turned on, and when they all initialized, he considered the installation a success. It wasn't until the next day that he noticed the UPS which was feeding the new servers had switched to bypass. As it turned out, the overnight load on the newly installed servers had peaked thereby overloading the UPS and placing hundreds of servers at risk. • At a large healthcare industry data center containing both low density (with no redun- dancy) and high density (with 2N redundancy) configurations, a low density server was inadvertently installed in a high density rack. This error wasn't discovered until the time came to decommission the server. In the end, running the server ended up costing about 20 times more in electrical costs than was necessary. Common questions answered by operation tools: • What is my current workflow? Figure 6 • The data center has hot spots, how can I address this? Key operations questions • What is the overall health of my data center? • I lost a fan on my CRAC, what do I do now? • My power capacity is exceeded on a rack, what can I do? • What is my PUE? APC by Schneider Electric White Paper 107 Rev 0 7
  • 8. How Data Center Physical Infrastructure Management Software Improves Planning and Cuts Operational Costs Modern operations software tools perform the following operations-related functions: • Distribute and track single and three phase equipment power draw, ensuring all three phases on the power system carry a balanced load (This means an operator becomes less reliant on a vendor or on an electrician to determine power system load balances.) • Illustrate power path–from UPS to rack to individual devices–within the rack, measured load, and rack capacity (Rather than discovery through trial and error, this helps the op- erator to immediately identify which servers will be affected if a particular rack or UPS happens to fail.) • Illustrate average and peak power usage by rack (This helps to justify decisions when determining where to locate a new server.) • Generate an audit trail for all changes to assets and work orders for a specified range of time, including a record of alarms raised and alarms removed (When trying to determine why a system failed, rather than relying on various individuals’ opinion of which equip- ment was moved and when, the operator can utilize the system to provide the factual evidence.) • Identify excess capacity and indicates which devices can either be decommissioned or used elsewhere (This can help save energy costs be reallocating underutilized IT room assets.) • Generate a PUE value on a daily basis and track historical PUE (This allows the opera- tor to analyze whether management’s cost cutting, energy saving strategies are actually working.) Modern Planning & Implementation software management tools allow for improvements to standard operational procedures. Figure 7 compares both traditional and improved workflows regarding the loss of a fan on a CRAC unit. Figures 8 and 9 illustrate examples of different approaches for managing data center energy consumption issues. Traditional approach Monitoring  Staff is notified  New fan begins  system detects  and arranges for  operation fan loss on CRAC maintenance Human intervention:  high Risk of downtime:  high Figure 7 Traditional vs. modern Updated approach approach: CRAC fan loss Monitoring system  System identifies  Maintenance  detects CRAC fan loss  specific servers at  repairs fan / maintenance work  risk order generated At risk applications  Applications  Nearby fans speed  restored to  up to compensate for  moved to alternate  servers original servers loss Human intervention:  low Risk of downtime:  low In a traditional approach, the human operator reasons in the following manner: “I have three CRAC units and 15 racks. It’s CRAC #3 that is malfunctioning, so I only have to worry about APC by Schneider Electric White Paper 107 Rev 0 8
  • 9. How Data Center Physical Infrastructure Management Software Improves Planning and Cuts Operational Costs the last 5 racks in my chain.” This human tribal knowledge calculation/correlation might work when only a limited number of racks need to be managed. However, as the IT room envi- ronments grow, the situation becomes less and less manageable. Hot spots and overloaded circuits occur when operators rely on their last recollection and / or on a series of traditional assumptions. This is when problems begin to occur. At the higher levels of complexity, the management tools perform the task much more efficiently and accurately than the human brain. The traditional method for tracking IT room equipment in/out logs involves either removal or installation of a device and then logging the device into a book (by a designated person). This procedure is followed for any device the size of a disk/tape and larger. All drive bays are audited nightly by security and if drives go missing, security reviews the access logs and server room security footage to see who might have taken them. Modern operations software can provide data center inventory information from a hand held device while on the data center floor. An integrated barcode scanner simplifies the task of implementing work orders and identifying equipment. Using a wireless network, server locations are automatically synchronized, and device and asset attributes are detailed. Searches can be run by equipment vendor name, model, and type. Information can also be exported to an Excel format. Consider a scenario where the data center operator is attempting to determine the overall “ health of the power and cooling physical infrastructure. In a traditional data center the Hot spots and overloaded operator would have to measure and interpret the health of each individual device. This circuits occur when operators measurement information would have to be kept on spreadsheets. The data would have to rely on their last recollection be manually aggregated for reporting. and / or on a series of tradi- ” tional assumptions. Modern management tools are capable of 7x24 centralized device discovery, management, and monitoring. When problems occur, instant infrastructure alerts and alarms are triggered based on user defined thresholds and conditions. Reports and graphs are quickly generated to help diagnose the nature of the problem. Issue: Energy efficiency management Typical data centers are excessive consumers of energy. Historically, data center design and operations have been focused on reliability and capacity. This has led to the unfortunate situation where data centers have not been optimized for efficiency. In fact, it is difficult to identify any one place where a data center is engineered for efficiency, because independent decisions of equipment designers, system integrators, control programmers, installers, contractors, IT managers, and operators all contribute substantially to overall energy performance. Studies show that energy use is a substantial cost of IT operations, in some cases exceeding the cost of the IT hardware itself 2. This cost pressure, and the realization that data centers can be much more efficient in their use of energy, have influenced many data center opera- tors to lower energy consumption. Operators are ill equipped to measure energy consump- tion even though they are becoming accountable for it. Fortunately, new energy manage- ment tools are making their way into the suite of IT room management systems. 2 US Department of Energy, “Creating Energy Efficient Data Centers”, U.S. Department of Energy, May 2007 APC by Schneider Electric White Paper 107 Rev 0 9
  • 10. How Data Center Physical Infrastructure Management Software Improves Planning and Cuts Operational Costs Traditional approach No changes made  Reduced data  to  IT, power, and  center load at night cooling systems Energy savings:  none Figure 8 Updated approach Traditional vs. modern approach: Load shifting System detects  Applications  reduced data center  consolidated onto  load at night rack #1 Load shifts based on  Rack #2 is turned off,  power consumption  thereby increasling the  data energy savings Energy savings:  high These new tools enable IT room operators to support load shifting (see Figure 8). When virtual machines migrate from zone to zone the management tools allow the power and cooling to also move dynamically. Figures 8 and 9 provide two illustrations of how energy management practices can reduce operational costs. Traditional approach Legacy system detects  Data center  Variable speed  lower load  temperature  fans  in CRACS are  requirement  at night allowed to rise adjusted down Energy savings:  moderate Figure 9 Traditional vs. modern approach: Intelligent Updated approach temperature setting System detects  Reduced cooling load  lower load  reported to BMS  requirement at night system BMS optimizes the  Variable speed fans  chiller by raising chilled  in CRACS are  water temperature adjusted down Energy savings:  high APC by Schneider Electric White Paper 107 Rev 0 10
  • 11. How Data Center Physical Infrastructure Management Software Improves Planning and Cuts Operational Costs Analysis: The goal with analysis is to arrive at an optimal or realistic decision based on data. For example, an audit trail can be generated for all changes to assets within the computer room. Identifying If a spike in power demand seems to occur on the same rack at the same time every night, operational and the spike is dangerously close to tripping a breaker threshold, then a decision can be made to modify workflow so that the consumption peak for that rack can be reduced. strengths and weaknesses Analysis of physical infrastructure operational data can also determine the cause of problems (i.e., what is slow, what is costly). Combining analytics and predictive simulation is yet another way the data center can help to generate business value. Figure 10 highlights the types of questions that can be addressed through the use of modern data center physical infrastructure management tools. Performance reports track outages by rack, row, and power distribution zone. When servers fail more frequently in one area, an underlying reason can be determined. Without a frame of reference, the value of data center metrics is limited if the purpose of the operator is to raise efficiency and reduce data center cost. Common questions answered by analytics tools: • What do I have in my data center?  • Who has touched which equipment and when? • Do I have stranded cooling and power capacity? Figure 10 • When will firmware have to be updated? Key analytics questions • By what date will the data center run out of power and cooling  capacity? What will run out first? • When should batteries be charged on UPS?   • When will the next large data center physical infrastructure  investment be necessary? • How can I predict the need for future infrastructure, investments  and rollouts? Modern analytics software tools perform the following functions: • Identify discrepancies between planned energy usage, based on nameplate information, and actual usage, based on actual power data (This helps operators plan more accurate capacity forecasts which help influence budgeting and acquisition decisions.) • Generate inventory reports organized by device type, age, manufacturer, and properties of the device (This enables the operator to quickly identify underutilized assets, assets out of warranty, and assets that need to be upgraded.) • Generate energy usage reports (see Figure 11) by subsystem (This allows the opera- tors to determine which racks or subsystems generate the most energy cost and to benchmark whether energy consumption is increasing as a result of recent changes to the IT room.) • Provide details on enable the link of operating costs to charge backs for each business unit user group (This allows the operator to modify the energy consumption behavior of various business units and enables the business to make better decisions on which technologies they deploy.) APC by Schneider Electric White Paper 107 Rev 0 11
  • 12. How Data Center Physical Infrastructure Management Software Improves Planning and Cuts Operational Costs Efficiency dashboard Web-enabled interface For easy integration with 3rd party web page through application programming interface (API) Figure 11 Energy consumption analytics (sample screen extracted from the APC by Schneider Electric InfraStruxure Energy Efficiency application) Energy efficiency calculation Current and historical PUE values based on the current IT load for a fact-based Subsystem energy losses Insight into energy losses and cost of understanding of energy efficiency at the facility level subsystems, with details of which subsystem draws the greatest cost © 2009 APC by Schneider E lec tric When data center floor and rack space specifications are not coordinated with power, cooling, power distribution, and cooling distribution capacities, the result is stranded capacity. This concept can best be illustrated by a CEO who walks around the data center, sees several racks that are only half full, and questions why the data center manager is claiming that the data center is “at full capacity”. Examples of stranded capacity in the data center include the following: • An air conditioner has sufficient capacity but inadequate air distribution to the IT load • A PDU has sufficient capacity but no available breaker positions • Floor space is available but there is no remaining power • Air conditioners are in the wrong location • Some PDUs are overloaded while others are lightly loaded • Some areas are overheated while others are cold Stranded capacity is a frustrating capacity management problem for data center profession- als. It is difficult to explain to users or management that a data center with 1 MW of installed power and cooling can’t cool new blade servers when only operating at 200 kW of total load. Link to resource An effective capacity management tool not only identifies and highlights stranded capacity, APC White Paper 150 but also helps prevent data center staff from creating the situation in the first place. For more Power and Cooling Capacity information on how to manage stranded capacity, see APC White Paper 150, Power and Management for Data Cooling Capacity Management for Data Centers. Centers APC by Schneider Electric White Paper 107 Rev 0 12
  • 13. How Data Center Physical Infrastructure Management Software Improves Planning and Cuts Operational Costs Conclusion With the challenges of higher-density computing, dynamic workloads, and the need for more efficient energy consumption, organizations require software that allows them to plan, operate at low cost, and analyze for workflow improvement. Only higher visibility, more control and improved automation can help deliver on the commitment of producing business value. Holistic management capabilities available today can enable data center professionals to maximize their capacity to control their energy costs and to advise the business on how to utilize IT assets more effectively. By sharing key data points, historical data, and asset tracking information, and by developing the ability to charge back users, the new Planning & Implementation tools allow users to take actions based upon data center business intelli- gence. About the authors Torben Karup Nielsen is a Principal Software Researcher on APC by Schneider Electric's Data Center Software Research Team. He holds a master's degree in computer science and mathematics from the University of Southern Denmark. He has worked extensively with data center management and energy efficiency software as well as integration between data center infrastructure management (DCIM), IT and workflow management systems. Dennis Bouley is a Senior Research Analyst at APC by Schneider Electric's Data Center Science Center. He holds bachelor’s degrees in journalism and French from the University of Rhode Island and holds the Certificat Annuel from the Sorbonne in Paris, France. He has published multiple articles in global journals focused on data center IT and physical infra- structure environments and has authored several white papers for The Green Grid. APC by Schneider Electric White Paper 107 Rev 0 13
  • 14. How Data Center Physical Infrastructure Management Software Improves Planning and Cuts Operational Costs Resources Click on icon to link to resource Classification of Data Center Operations Technology (OT) Management Tools Browse all APC APC White Paper 104 white papers whitepapers.apc.com Power and Cooling Capacity Management For Data Centers APC White Paper 150 Power Sizing Calculator APC TradeOff Tool 1 Browse all APC TradeOff Tools™ Energy Allocation Calculator tools.apc.com APC TradeOff Tool 2 Energy Efficiency Calculator APC TradeOff Tool 6 Contact us For feedback and comments about the content of this white paper: Data Center Science Center, APC by Schneider Electric DCSC@Schneider-Electric.com If you are a customer and have questions specific to your data center project: Contact your APC by Schneider Electric representative APC by Schneider Electric White Paper 107 Rev 0 14