Schneider Electric has introduced a new application as part of its StruxureWare for Data Centres Software Suite that is specifically designed to address the needs of data centres (DC) with multiple tenants.
StruxureWare Data Centre Operation for Co-location is a Data Centre Infrastructure Management (DCIM) application that optimises data centre equipment and space by providing multitenant data centre operators with real-time status updates on data centre capacities, including data centres power, cooling, and available space, to help identify any constraints for future expansion and to better allocate equipment and resources.
It also provides insight into usage and availability on a tenant level, which enables facility managers to operate the data centre as a business through capabilities such as detailed chargeback for power and integrated tenant billing and support.
At the launch of the new application, Steve Harris, Sales and Marketing director, buildings division, said that the aim was in "achieving visibility from shop floor to top floor".
Aaron Davis, chief marketing officer, Schneider Electric emphasised the need for visibility in all aspects of energy management, and said of the data centre, "How do you see energy? With StruxureWare software".
Davis said that current data centres could not easily go down the rip and replace route to tackle energy management and so compatibility with current systems was critical for the new applications. Consequently, they "work with virtually any third party hardware, software or infrastructure", with reporting delivered to mobiles devices.
Davis said that an open platform approach was chosen to provide the greatest level of interoperability. Only recently has the granularity of instrumentation and control, coupled with the open standards needed for software to make real energy efficiency management possible. However, cybersecurity is a key element in this suite, said Davis, to protect the whole system.
He said that the energy efficiency market has the potential to be huge. Even minor savings can be significant. Therefore, the potential savings of up to 30% will be very attractive to organisations.
"We do not believe businesses will ever go back to a CapEx approach to business," said Davis, "sustainability is for CIOs, not hippies."
The major features of the StruxureWare Data Centre Operation for Co-location are:
- Space and Cage Management, which allows the data centre operator to apply grid-based naming for floor mount equipment, utilise cage drawing tools and cage power modelling, and visualise the solution in 3D.
- Integrated Tenant Billing, which imports tenant and billing account data from the CRM system into the DCIM system for mapping tenant assets, providing detailed power draw, total energy footprint and access to an instant impact analysis at the tenant level – allowing for integrated billing support on sold and used power and footprint.
- Facility Maintenance Scheduling, providing a complete audit trail on all facility equipment and cages, the ability to create and track maintenance schedules by equipment, and impact analysis to ensure redundancy is maintained during maintenance procedures.
- Measured Cage Power, which provides detailed charge back to individual tenants through an easy overview of sold and measured power.
- Space Capacity Reports, which show an instant overview of current space capacities, identifying space as sellable, occupied, reserved or internally used.
- Computer Aided Design (CAD) Integration, which automatically converts CAD cage drawings into a DCIM model thus keeping all CAD layered information intact for future needs.
- Advanced Power Modeling, including the ability to model Distributed Redundant UPS and Distributed Redundant UPS with Catcher for a representation of the actual power distribution in a facility.
The suite is made up of modules that can be combined as necessary to build a solution stack suited to the needs of each organisation.
Matthew Farnell, sales manager, Schneider Electric, said that existing toolsets tend to be siloed and focused on business unit needs, which do not give full picture of what is happening. He said that for data centres facing multitenant challenges, such as providing high efficiency, high availability and scalability under strict SLAs, there was a need to be infrastructurally and operationally efficient from day one of operation.
Farnell said that the granular levels of monitoring in the new application allowed operators to do very specific chargeback with predictive capabilities and detailed subsystem analysis, to see potential impact of changes. This range of capabilities has unlocked stranded capacity for customers, he said.
There are new reporting and presentation capabilities in the system in the StruxureWare Portal that can give a global picture of DCs on tablet. This level of reporting, said Farnell, gives "a single record of truth throughout the enterprise".
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