Consider Data Center Consolidation and Virtualization
If your data center infrastructure is outdated or your data center’s utilization of space, power, and cooling resources is inefficient, you stand to benefit greatly from consolidation and virtualization efforts that will decrease the number of physical assets you have and the associated resources they consume.
The primary motivator for data center consolidation is cost savings although it is not the only motivator. Additional benefits include reduction of security and disaster recovery requirements and the opportunity to centralize oversight and management of all architecture, operational procedures, and overall computer/network performance.
Virtual machines offer a powerful way to help relieve the typical headaches that plague administrators day in and day out. If you haven’t already begun to make use of virtualization in your data center, it’s time you start. Even if you migrate only a simple file server to virtualized technology, you’ll quickly see the benefits — and eventually, you may want your entire data center virtualized.
Consolidating equipment, racks, or even entire sites enables you to increase efficiency by migrating workloads to fewer physical locations or the cloud. With less equipment and sites to power and cool, energy consumption is greatly reduced.
Inefficient use of space and power can often be attributed to the shortcomings of manual capacity planning and device power budgeting. While the traditional approach to power budgeting is to de-rate the server nameplate value to around 60-70%, this process is based upon estimations and is largely inaccurate.
It often results in wasted space and stranded power which negatively impact your sustainability. Instead, it is best practice to automate rack power capacity planning to get the most out of your existing resources.
Leverage outlet metered PDUs and a modern DCIM solution with an “Auto Power Budget” feature that automatically calculates an accurate power budget number for each make and model instance of a device based upon the actual load of that device in your environment running your applications. Auto Power Budget provides you with many opportunities to safely deploy more devices in fewer racks, enabling highly efficient data center operations.
Sunbird’s dcTrack® Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) Operations software offers a new way forward with the patent-pending Auto Power Budget feature. Auto Power Budget automatically calculates an accurate power budget number for each make and model instance of a device based upon the actual measured load of that device in your environment running your applications.
Sunbird collects and stores massive amounts of power data for Auto Power Budget calculations.
Artificial Intelligence Data Analysis for Auto Power Budget calculations
Power budget profiles are created for each device instance based upon your power policies.
Auto Power Budget Policies
Sunbird DCIM tracks and reports actual measured load, budgeted load, and stranded power capacity at the site, row, and cabinet levels.
Utilization and Efficiency Metrics
For devices with no history, Sunbird sets budgets based upon power profiles of similar models then provides weekly automatic updates based upon measured history once available.
Automatic Power Budget Weekly Updates
Sunbird DCIM users like Comcast and eBay report improvements in rack power utilization by as high as 40%. For more details, read the Comcast Case Study.
“dcTrack has a lot of great features but the best feature by far is the Auto Power Budget feature...In my opinion it provides the most realistic power consumption from your devices on the market. If you have not seen this in action, you should contact your Sunbird Partner for a demonstration right away.” Mark Wright, Engineer, Comcast.
Follow our weekly blogs for additional Tips to reduce power consumption (your carbon footprint) and increase the sustainability of your data centres.
Contact Tri-Paragon Inc. for additional details about our Sunbird Data Centre Infrastructure Management Software as a Service including a free DEMO and pricing. We can be reached at 416 865-3392 or by email at info@triparagon.com
