This audio was created using Microsoft Azure Speech Services
According to Hiren Lad, Software Architect at Schneider Electric, all capacity – power, cooling and space – is important to co-lo data center operators.
“Capacity is important from all aspects of the data center, power, cooling, space. To be able to visualize the data center means to be able to provide capacity information back to their customers and back to their businesses about what they have, where it is and how effectively it’s being used. That also relates to costs so we need to provide that information back in a usable form by being able to model, manage and simulate the actual planning of the site.”
The software demonstration which follows, shows how StruxureWare Data Center Operation for Co-location enables users to associate capacity allocation and use with customers of the data center. This is obviously beneficial from a client billing point of view, but it also enables available capacity to be tracked so that sales can be maximised. From the co-lo customer’s point of view, ensuring that capacity which is being paid for is also being utilised effectively is important.
“Most co-location data centers normally do not have access to the customer details,” says Hiren. “This means they don’t have access to the servers and equipment they are running in the background. Capacity Reporting enables us to zoom inside the co-lo mode and see which area belongs to each customer. The areas are sold for a certain amount of space, which in this case was 30kW. The user can also drill into the co-lo can then see the amount of power being sold to that customer, what kind of receptacle.
“From a capacity point of view that information has to be taken off the UPS, but again, that can be seen in multiple ways. We were able to look back into the main tool, click on the overlay that says power, and see how the power was being delivered to that zone. We then went into the electrical structure and could see the hierarchy by clicking on a UPS, this is just one of various different ways of seeing capacity.
The final step was delivering the report to the customer, Hiren explains that every time a co-lo customer wants to see that, they are able to go into reports and very quickly be able to generate a report based on power for the customer. By selecting the entire floor plan, and requested power capacity over a period of a day, the customer can see how much power has been delivered to the zone.”
StruxureWare Data Center Operation enables vendor-agnostic inventory management with real-time device failures and data shown within your data center physical layout, as well as recommendations on how to resolve issues. A location-based drill-down view provides a structured overview of data center locations, from a global to local view down to single assets. The Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) calculator supplies information on daily utilization of energy. For instant updates on the go Data Center Operation: Mobile provides access to StruxureWare Data Center Operation information via handheld. StruxureWare Data Center Operation is available as an Enterprise or a Co-location base application. The Co-location application provides additional space and cage management, integrated tenant billing and reporting capabilities, more details are available on the Schneider Electric website.
