2BM enhances monitoring software

2bm announces that the Sensorium software, part of its range of environmental monitoring products, has been enhanced with new functionalities and ‘real-world’ benchmarking data. Sensorium automated software is now easier to use than ever before and helps an organisation to understand its data centre’s carbon footprint by providing real-time insight into the environmental performance of all its data centre components.

With data centre (DC) managers under pressure to reduce energy usage, Sensorium enables them to monitor power consumption down to rack level and calculate cumulative KwH. The software accurately tracks and monitors the impact of new data centre designs and shows how any changes to the infrastructure, for example the introduction of cool aisle containment or making small changes to the temperature, affects overall performance and efficiency.

Sensorium improvements include:
· Built on .net 4.5 framework: ensures 10 years’ worth of forward and backward compatibility with Microsoft products;
· .net web services for Server Client real-time communications component: for true thin client functionality without the need to load additional components such as AcitveX or Macromedia Flash;
· Asset search: locate hardware using host or model names;
· Automatic hardware benchmarking: uses ‘real world’ historical metered data as opposed to test lab or plate value readings. Benchmarking data for individual customers, cost centres and departments is available to ensure that the data reflects how individual stakeholders operate and run their assets;
· Graphical Capacity planning functionality: uses ‘real-world’ historical data: combined with asset register information to identify cabinets which provide the best location for the installation of new hardware;
· Per-Cabinet regression analysis: uses ‘real-world’ historical data to predict the effect on the infrastructure of proposed population from the capacity planning functionality;
· Real-time graphs: In addition to the existing historical data graphs, real-time data logging is available at the touch of a button for data granularity of up to 15 seconds.

Jason Preston, Director of Innovation at 2bm, comments, “With Sensorium the days of the over-provisioning of IT equipment, low utilisation rates and dependencies on the national grid for energy transmission and distribution are a thing of the past. By accurately measuring a facility’s power load, data centre managers finally have the ability to monitor the bigger picture and gain better understanding of data centre performance at component level.

Sensorium also tracks and monitors the environmental performance of all data centre equipment devices, for example cabinet power distribution units, chillers, air handling units, uninterruptable power supplies and generators. Data centre managers will be alerted in real-time to any issues such as air conditioning failure, power outages or temperature increases and will therefore be able to take immediate action.

Preston concludes, “DC managers are often put off by full DCIM rollouts as they can be complex and time-consuming. Sensorium is now more straightforward to implement and use and as a fully customisable, bespoke software solution it truly gives the environmental control back to the data centre manager.”