Evolution of Data Centers: Advances in Management and Remote Monitoring
We are now more aware than ever before of what is happening in our domain.
Whether it’s a smart door-camera alerting us of a delivery or home Wi-Fi noting a new login, we expect to be kept up to date, even when we are not physically at home.
It would be illogical to think that Data Centers- which manage the flow of such information- wouldn’t always be completely transparent to their managers, whether remote or not. Yet the reality is that some older Data Centers are struggling to keep up.
Data Centers’ power and cooling infrastructures get about three times more data points and notifications than they did a decade ago- a continually growing amount that traditional Data Center remote monitoring services were not designed to handle.
These overworked systems may also fail to flag critical alerts or extract actionable value from the data, thus creating a dangerous blind spot for Data Center managers’ decision making.
This is where digital remote monitoring comes into the picture: moving from the old approach of issuing intermittent status updates to always being online with real-time monitoring.
Always on, always online
Real time monitoring puts one in the driver’s seat, enabling predictive action instead of being reactive to issues as they arise.
Even more precisely than an Apple Watch predicting a heart attack, a well-connected Data Center can avoid having downtime by recommending equipment repair before it breaks down.
According to the Uptime Institute, 88% of Data Center outages are caused by human error and mechanical failures. Server downtime can cost companies up to US$9,000 per minute on average. Therefore, operators must quickly identify, isolate and respond to risks.
Outages can also lead to outrage, and clients could rightly move their business elsewhere- another huge and entirely avoidable loss for the operator.
Additional saving achievable by digitizing aging infrastructure is to optimize power management using smart devices for remote monitoring, such as circuit breakers, sensors and meters.
This delivers benefits including decreasing the number and duration of unplanned outages, improving the effectiveness of maintenance activities, managing onsite renewable energy, improving power distribution efficiency and supporting energy cost allocation and billing.
Nowhere is the industry’s drive towards remote automation more apparent than with the Universal Automation.org (UAO), a not-for-profit association managing the reference implementation of a shared source runtime, of which Schneider Electric is proud to be a member.
The UAO brings together IT and OT software vendors and others to develop a vendor-agnostic ecosystem of portable and interoperable ‘plug and produce’ software that can run with almost any hardware.
Remote is king
The resilience of Data Centers was put to the test in the face of the global pandemic. Not only did operators have to work around stay-at-home orders, but other industries going fully-online put more pressure than ever before on operators.?
The new normal of remote and hybrid work, along with increasing media consumption means more data traffic generated than ever before from video conferencing, cloud computing, streaming, to online education and gaming.
To meet these demands for computing and maintain business continuity, Data Center enterprises and hyperscalers have come to require the ability to easily manage, monitor and enable their global operations; from anywhere and at any time.
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This calls for going beyond the common Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) platform, especially for businesses operating multiple centers or Edge locations. For them, a Data Center management solution can act as a central hub to gain visibility and control over their entire infrastructure.
Moving forward, remote monitoring enables scalability as Data Centers grow to have hundreds of thousands of devices to monitor second-to-second.
In its 2021 State of the Data Center Report, AFCOM stated that over 40% of its survey respondents believe that robotics and automation will be leveraged in Data Centers, signaling the industry’s acknowledgment of the benefits of utilizing intelligent, autonomous systems for smaller tasks and distributed environments.
Software for sustainability
Bringing together how remote monitoring can make a system run smarter and inform operators where the inefficiencies lie, also answers another issue faced by Data Centers: sustainable operations.
Data Centers consume an estimated 2% of global electricity and a similar percentage of carbon emissions, coming from operational power consumption and materials that go into building new facilities.
Based on Schneider Electric’s projections, by 2040, total Data Center energy consumption will be 2,700 TWh, with 60% coming from distributed sites and 40% from Data Centers.
While many advocate renewable energy, cutting down on electricity usage is just as important, considering the growing emphasis on efficient measurement as well as the management of energy consumption and carbon footprint of a company’s Data Centers.
A report found that even when idle, servers use between 50-70% of peak power, which is a lot of energy spent on nothing. Better monitoring can help identify which servers can be shut off or put to better use i.e., hosting other clients.
Admittedly, the tech needed to enable this can add a significant layer of complexity to the system, which is something that can be intimidating or a turn-off for operators that already have other things to be concerned about.
However, tools such Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure IT software can help reduce complexity and address unique management challenges of running a hybrid IT environment.
It does this by offering features including granular remote device configuration that enables users to change settings on multiple devices from one centralized platform, improved environmental monitoring that gives users eyes and ears across their Data Centers, as well as enhanced remote capacity modeling and planning.
As Data Centers become larger, more complex and increasingly critical to the functioning of society, operators need the right software to help them scale while optimizing operations to reduce energy consumption.
Winning strategy?
In an industry built around understanding the flow of data, there’s no space for having blind spots. Monitoring is critical to maintaining, managing and securing a Data Center. Hence, it should be part of an operator’s overall Data Center strategy.
Having in place a robust monitoring system which leverages the right gear and strategy can effectively automate Data Center monitoring, making maintaining uptime a much easier task.
This frees up operators from being tied to the Data Center, giving them the peace of mind and time to use the better part of their schedules to focus on increasing performance and enhancing overall efficiency.
Leave machines to mechanical tasks, and people to tasks that need a human touch.
ED- VAPCO (a Mitsubishi- KEPCO JV)
2 年Nice article Shaheen, well written. Trust you remember me from our MACT days.
Leader in Large Scale Project Delivery
2 年Good Insights Shaheen. Thanks for sharing
Was enquiring about you last week during my talk with Ranjit
Promoter @ Griha Shiksha Kendra | Non-formal learning aligned with Sustainability
2 年Hello Shaheen. Hope that you remember me!
Certified Data Center Professional
2 年Very apt insights...!
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