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Greening the Data Center
How iTRACS Physical Layer Manager (iTRACS PLM) with iDCL can Utilize Trusted Data Sources and Business Processes to help Organizations Move up the Ladder of Physical Resource Optimization.
Greening a data center, making it more environmentally and financially friendly, involves improving physical resource utilization, improving documentation of what and where existing physical resources are, and knowing whether those resources are currently in use. By improving all three areas resources can be freed up for potential use elsewhere or moved to the graveyard for recycling.
iTRACS PLM with iDCL provides ten architectural concepts that enable data centers to move up the ladder of physical resource optimization while constantly improving on the accuracy of their data.
- Document Existing Resources
Understanding asset location compared to other assets is critical to improving efficiency and maximizing resources. Underutilized resources can be identified and decommissioned (reducing energy expenditures and greenhouse gas emissions) or maximized (reducing the need for additional equipment and capital costs for data center expansion).
iTRACS' hierarchical database structure allows for documentation of both permanent and commissionable passive and intelligent assets, making it easy to visualize where assets are located and what is available for future connections. - Understand the Physical Characteristics and Requirements of Assets
Knowing the footprint of data center assets and their power and cooling requirements allows data center administrators to evaluate and adjust their initial and ongoing power and cooling requirements. According to a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report to Congress, "The power and cooling infrastructure that supports IT equipment in data centers...uses significant energy, accounting for 50 percent of the total consumption of data centers."1 In a typical data center cooling requirements are calculated for worse case scenarios, or the belief that the entire data center must be at a specific temperature.
Manufacturers templates of enclosures, assets, cards and ports (visual images and physical characteristics) provided with iTRACS PLM facilitate creation of the unique library items that represent the permissible configurable instances of assets that can be deployed in the data center.
Rigorous enforcement of specific permissible physical configurations is another trusted source. iTRACS PLM allows administrators to define rules for the type of data entered against an asset and for who may update that data. By creating rules, values that are entered can be standardized. Once values are standardized they can be tracked, calculated and trended. Also, by tracking data against the assets by default (rather than being dependant on user intervention) administrators can quickly and accurately recalculate changes. This freedom allows administrators to constantly review and modify temperature and power on an as-needed basis, improving overall efficiency within the data center. - Understand How Everything Is Interconnected and Interdependent
Understanding existing and potential connectivity allows for impact assessment prior to commissioning or decommissioning, reducing downtime and improving efficiency.
Accurately identifying whether and how resources are connected to each other is a critical requirement in moving up the greening ladder. Permanent cabling infrastructure is useful in correlating the location of an asset. Many data centers limit themselves to active-component-to-active-component connectivity, ignoring the passive infrastructure in between. Passive assets and the over connectivity of assets are vitally important for the determination of fault points, utilization, and even impact cooling and energy requirements.
Defined work flow processes and enforceable business rules can help organizations track and document the connectivity of their assets. For data centers that would prefer a higher degree of accuracy in their connectivity data, external trusted sources such as intelligent infrastructure management (intelligent hardware patching) and network discovery can enable improvement in the accuracy of data.
This structure is the third trusted source, established by the permanent infrastructure designer and maintained and updated through business processes. - Relate the Physical Entities to Everything That is Knowable About Them
iTRACS PLM allows for the storage and accumulation of data against any object in the database. Data can be accumulated and stored historically over time, allowing data center administrators to analyze their space, power, and environmental monitoring trends and needs.
Data can be manually entered or imported via a batch process, calculated by predefined system rules, interactively retrieved from an external ODBC compliant databases and files, or retrieved via SNMP/WMI queries.
Nearly any type of data can be documented against the assets within iTRACS PLM. Users can document utilization, warranty information, installed applications or mission critical processes, assigned business units, and attach documents (PDF, DOC, XLS, etc.).
Data retrieved from external applications and devices can be viewed as trusted sources and used for correlation against manual processes. By comparing overlapping data between applications, users can better ensure the accuracy of their data. - Provide Controlled Navigable Access With a Graphical Dashboard
Visual display of data can simplify impact assessment, decision making, analysis of trends, and providing data to a larger group of users.
For example, the results of environmental monitoring, such as temperature variations within the data center, can be displayed in graphical format so administrators can see at a glance where hot spot areas are within the data center. This allows additional cooling to be directed to the areas that really need it instead of over chilling the entire data center at an exorbitant cost to both the bottom line and the environment. It also helps to prevent servers from failing prematurely due to cooling issues.
iTRACS PLM has a graphical dashboard known as MapView that can be used to display historical and current information - such as the results of environmental monitoring. MapView can also be used to view data points, images, CAD, Virtual Wiring Center views, and bar, line, and pie charts.
It supports graphical user navigation through the infrastructure, allowing users to navigate through familiar objects (floor, room, row, cabinet, and device) rather than forcing the user to navigate through textual data or spreadsheets. Visualization better shows the relationship between database objects, and can show how connections exist between objects.
Finally, graphical navigation allows administrators to better control user access to data by formatting data that best fits the specific user's role as well limiting what a user can view. - Use Visualization
The visualization of assets (and their connections) within the data center enables visual confirmation of planned changes or proposed changes. This allows administrators to visually analyze the impact a change will have on the data center and ensure that a change is made correctly. Currently, for many organizations this check must occur physically - a user must visit the enclosure and review.
Virtual Wiring Center (VWC) gives administrators a more accurate look into their data centers, by providing a realistic view of assets and their physical characteristics. Being able to visualize how an asset is connected and review the components associated with that asset provides administrators with an extra level of confirmation. By providing this visual confirmation within the iTRACS PLM application, administrators can save valuable time. - Improve Workflow Processes
According to the EPA, "data centers in the United States have the potential to save up to $4 billion in annual electricity costs through more energy efficient equipment and operations, and the broad implementation of best management practices."2 Optimizing workflow processes allows for implementation of these best practices, and ensures that procedures are easily followed and maintained.
iTRACS PLM includes a comprehensive, simple to use change control mechanism along with features that automate, control and streamline the work order process, increasing productivity and maintaining business compliance.
When combined with the work flow engine from iDCL, iTRACS PLM can provide administrators with the tools required for the successful commissioning, decommissioning, and movement of assets. By integrating work, work flow, and accurate documentation into one system, processes can be streamlined and more accurate records maintained - improving the accuracy of work, and decreasing the amount of time required to complete work. - Log and Event Notification
Two critical components to improving the efficiency of a data center are the logging and notification of changes within the data center. A good data center management application will log all changes that take place (whether they are user driven or automatically occur).
Event notification allows administrators to be notified of changes to the data center that could affect performance. Alerts can be created to inform administrators of unusual spikes in energy usage, server performance, equipment failures, and more.
iTRACS PLM offers enhanced logging along with a scalable event system. All changes are logged. These changes are then fed into the event system. Events can be triggered for min/max thresholds, delta changes, or simply the occurrence of an action (e.g. disconnect). Additional actions can be added to specific events, allowing administrators to be notified via email, text message, push information to a syslog, or 3rd party application/database. Events can even trigger the running and emailing of reports (e.g. utilization report sent on the first day of every month). - Searching and Reporting/Trending/Observed Data
The ability to track and report on data over time offers administrators a unique and through overview of their data center and its individual components. It also helps with documenting that organizations are meeting standards and controls such as Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404, ISO 17799, ITIL, and other compliance requirements for multinational corporations. This ability to search and report on trends and observed data will help enterprises to demonstrate compliance with requirements, such as the ISO specifications for greenhouse gases3. Shareholders or government agencies may also appreciate the demonstrable positive effects on the bottom line of greening the data center.
From a more day-to-day perspective trending and historical records can assist administrators determine the life span of their data center, and the capacity for growth with regards to critical components such as power, cooling, space, and connectivity requirements.
iTRACS PLM includes a point-and-click and customizable report generator, which includes over 60 pre-configured reports that assist data center administrators. For example, administrators can report on switch utilization or determine switch ports that can be reused. iTRACS' MapView feature displays historical and current information in an easy-to-understand and useful way.
In addition, MapViews can be utilized to visualize historical data in line, bar, or area charts, again helping administrators visualize the usage within their data center. - Flexibility
Greening the data center leads to increased flexibility for enterprises; freeing up funds that might otherwise be spent on underutilized equipment and skyrocketing energy bills for improvements, product development, research, etc. Depending on the area, enterprises may also be eligible for monetary incentives from their local energy providers for reducing the load on the energy grid.
iTRACS PLM is flexible too. It is completely configurable and customizable; able to be modified to fit exact and unique data center requirements, from asset documentation to work flow management, to how data is presented and who it is presented to. Finally, iTRACS' solution is easily integrated with other data center technologies that provide asset and incident management and monitoring and control, allowing your data center management application to become an integrated trusted source within the business plans for your data center.
Where is your enterprise on the ladder to greenness?
1 EPA Report to Congress 2 EPA Press Release 3 Greenhouse gases -- Part 1: Specification with guidance at the organization level for quantification and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions and removals.
