Electronics Protection - November/December 2012 - (Page 8)

Feature Lowering Data Center Energy Bills: DCIM to the Rescue Sev Onyshkevych, Chief Marketing Officer FieldView Solutions It should come as no surprise that many data center build-outs are driven by one thing, money. How much will it cost, and how much can be saved? Clearly, companies are under a great deal of pressure when managing their data centers. That’s why tools like Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) have become so popular, and why they’re coming to the rescue for a wide range of global businesses. Gartner Group backs up this claim, “Energy-related costs account for approximately 12 percent of overall data center expenditure and are the fastest-rising cost in the data center. Analysts said that data center power, cooling capacity, energy supply, and cost problems are likely to worsen during the next few years as organizations grow their technology infrastructure.” Analysts are sounding the alarm, imploring companies to more effectively manage costs impacting the data center. Says Gartner Research Vice President Rakesh Kumar, “With upwards of 5 percent growth for server shipments predicted per year, organizations need to forcefully control their energy consumption and costs. To do this, data center operators need to measure energy-related data across the whole site, including the building, the facility’s components and the IT equipment portfolio.” Clearly there’s a need to get these costs under control, deploying DCIM solutions can help. Because many data center managers rely on a series of discrete management “point-solutions,” they don’t have enough information to make proper, informed decisions. These tools cover just a specific slice of the data center, are often given away with hardware or facilities equipment purchases and are not designed to consolidate data into one place or provide a single consolidated view. And these local solutions certainly cannot correlate data into meaningful reports for higher-level decision making about the overall operation of one or more data centers. DCIM accurately polls energy usage, not only for the outlets, circuits and panels that directly power computer equipment housed in the data center, but also for the larger infrastructure that regulates the power and cools the equipment, including CRAC (cooling) units, uninterrupted power supplies, switch gear, building controls systems, electronic power management, etc. The most effective tools leverage data collected from the entire data center, providing meaningful metrics as well as measures and graphics to monitor optimal power usage levels. So just how much can be saved? Gartner estimates that DCIM tools can reduce operating expenses by as much as 20 percent and extend the life of a data center by as much as five years. Sounds good, but we wanted to validate these statistics for ourselves. Setting the Stage There’s a lot of talk about DCIM, but what is it? Simply put, DCIM allows for centralized monitoring, management and intelligent capacity planning of critical facilities and IT systems. This enterprise data center process allows operators to address such challenges as rising energy costs, tight budgets, growth of network capacity, limited floor space and pressure for ensuring up-time. It’s all about maximizing data center ROI, while achieving new levels of productivity and efficiency. DCIM effectively collects and integrates data from traditionally siloed IT or facilities management tools. These tools often include BMS, EPMS, NMS, UPS, SCADA, Asset Management and PQM, to name a few. Rolling information from these often disparate systems up into a DCIM tool provides organizations with a single lens to view capacity, power utilization and obtain the knowledge of the center’s overall efficiency. DCIM to the Rescue How Did We Get Here? Taming a data center’s ever-increasing complexity is the driving force behind DCIM’s evolution. Simpler, lower-cost, data storage options and new technologies such as cloud computing and virtualization demand more effective IT resource management and, processing power is the name of the game. Simply put, data centers will continue to grow. Servers are continually getting faster and less expensive; data center owners purchase more devices, which in turn increases the amount of power required by an estimated 18 percent a year and the amount of space required by over 7 percent a year. This trend clearly puts a strain on data centers as they attempt to store and distribute more information. However, building out data centers to keep pace with Moore’s Law is an impractical solution and unnecessarily drives up OPEX. According to the September 22, 2012 New York Times article, Power, Pollution and the Internet, “Worldwide, the digital warehouses use about 30 billion watts of electricity, roughly equivalent to the output of 30 nuclear power plants, according to estimates industry experts compiled for The Times. Data centers in the United States account for onequarter to one-third of that load, the estimates show.” 8 A Real-World View of DCIM How are DCIM solutions played out in the real world? Recently, our team wanted to explore how data center managers leverage more complete information on energy usage, to drive down costs and optimize efficiency. Our methodology entailed discussions and analysis with six of our current customers, including a financial services firm, a major university, an investment bank and a multiline insurance company. November/December 2012 www.ElectronicsProtectionMagazine.com http://www.ElectronicsProtectionMagazine.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Electronics Protection - November/December 2012

Electronics Protection - November/December 2012
Buckeye Shapeform Provides Nuclear Lab New Case Options
Collaborative Design of Custom Enclosures - An Overview of the Process
Lowering Data Center Energy Bills: DCIM to the Rescue
What the New NFPA Workplace Electrical Safety Provisions Mean for Data Center Managers
Mitigating Risks Through Power Distribution Design
Don’t Call it a Box! Instrument Cases Can Combine Strength and Eye Appeal
L-com Adds New Sizes to Its Non-Powered Weatherproof Industrial Enclosures Line
Nusil Presents Thermally Conductive Electronic Packaging Material
Lapp’s Cable Glands Deliver EMI Protection and Simple Installation
New Surge Suppression Solution to Shield Electronics from Surge Energy Let-Through
Chatsworth Products Increases Surface Area on Cable Pathways by 400 Percent
Industry News
Calendar of Events

Electronics Protection - November/December 2012