Schneider Electric announces White Paper 150: Power and Cooling Capacity Management for Data Centres

Data centre physical infrastructure capacity management is defined as the action or process for ensuring power, cooling, and space is provided efficiently at the right time and in the right amount to support IT loads and processes. White Paper 150 discusses critical success factor for effective management of power and cooling capacities, including the provision of accurate capacity forecasts and ensuring appropriate capacity for the business needs.

“Forecasting and efficient provisioning of capacity is dependent on the ability to establish the power and cooling capability at the rack level,” says the author Neil Rasmussen, Senior VP of Innovation for Schneider Electric. “Having this capability is rare today. Data centre operators typically do not have the information they need to effectively deploy new equipment at the rate required by the business, and are unable to answer simple questions…”

The inability to answer simple questions is common. For data centres which are grossly over-designed or under-utilized, safety margins can allow successful operation with only a primitive understanding of overall system performance. While not financially or energy efficient, in the short term, oversizing provides a safety margin until such a time as the available capacity equals capacity utilized.

Today, however, three key factors are placing stress on data centres and exposing the inadequacies of such operating methods. These are ultra, high density IT equipment, the requirement to control total cost of ownership (TCO) and more fully utilize data centre capacity, and the rapid pace of change due to virtualization strategies and the refresh cycle of IT equipment. Each of these factors leads to pressure to operate data centers in a more predictable manner.

White Paper 150 describes a methodology for effective capacity management which is not dependant on detailed information about the IT devices at the rack level. The proposed methodology requires less effort to implement and maintain than traditional detailed inventory management systems, while still providing most of the key benefits.

At the same time, when capacity management is implemented as described in White Paper 150, it can provide critical information about the state of the data centre which is not provided by traditional monitoring systems. Combined with network power and cooling instrumentation, today’s DCIM software provide essential tools for efficient and effective capacity management straight “out of the box”.