23 july 2013

ASHRAE’s latest thermal guidelines present data center operators with the opportunity to significantly reduce their power and cooling expenses.  By carefully monitoring the temperatures in and around your data center assets you can safely increase temperature set points without increasing the risk of equipment failure and downtime.

The question, then, is how many RF Code sensors do you need in order to comply with the guidelines and begin to realize these savings? There are two answers: what is the minimum coverage necessary to meet ASHRAE guidelines, and what level of coverage will provide the greatest ability to control power and cooling costs.

To meet the minimal ASHRAE guidelines, your must deploy:

• At least 1 RF Code M250 Fixed Reader (how many readers are required will depend on the size of your data center)
• 3 R150-5 High-Performance Temperature Tags every third rack in your data center
• Sensors must be installed in the front of the rack, with one tag at the top, one in the center, and the third in the bottom of the rack

This level of instrumentation provides adequate temperature monitoring across the data center and also enables computation of the Rack Cooling Index (RCI), a metric that enables you to ensure that you are complying with the ASHRAE guidelines. However, it does not provide visibility into the microenvironment that exists in each rack, instead providing only an overall measurement of the ambient temperatures around your racks.

While minimal coverage may meet the ASHRAE guidelines and enable you to realize some savings, in order to maximize your savings while also minimizing the possibility of damage to your equipment, more fine-grained monitoring is necessary.

For full ASHRAE guideline compliance coupled with optimal data center power and cooling savings, we recommend:

• At least 1 RF Code M250 Fixed Reader (how many readers are required will depend on the size of your data center)
• 4 R150-5 High-Performance Temperature Tags in each rack in your data center
• 2 R155 High-Performance Humidity-Temperature Tags in each rack in your data center
• Sensors must be installed in both the front and back of each rack, with one temperature sensor at the top front/top back, one temperature-humidity sensor in the center front/center back, and the third temperature sensor in the bottom front/bottom back of the rack

This level of instrumentation provides complete visibility into the environmental conditions in each of your racks, helping you to detect hot spots that could lead to failures as data center temperatures rise. In addition to enabling computation of the Rack Cooling Index, this level of instrumentation also enables you to calculate the Return Temperature Index (RTI).  RTI, a metric that enables you to measure the efficiency of your air handling systems, greatly increases your ability to reduce cooling costs by helping to ensure that you are cooling your data center air precisely as much as is needed to adequately cool your equipment.

Source: www.rfcode.com

The post ASHRAE Compliance : An RF Code Checklist appeared first on International Finance.

23rd july 2013

Data isn’t just big; it’s massive.  With each passing minute, a staggering 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube.  Google receives over 2,000,000 search queries.  Email users send over 200,000,000 messages.  Apple receives 47,000 app downloads.  Get the picture?  Clearly the omnipresent “big data” is quickly manifesting itself into “massive data.”

According to 451, “DCIM, or Data Center Infrastructure Management, is one of the most disruptive technologies this year.   In 2012, the DCIM market generated around $429M in revenue and had record demand in the first quarter of 2013.”  Furthermore, DCIM sales are expected to grow 42% to reach $1.8B in aggregate revenue by 2013.  As a result of the increasing demand for DCIM to manage Big Data, it’s clear that what once was a trend for automation in the datacenter has now become a need that will only grow in the coming years.

But with growth comes confusion.  Compounding the issue, DCIM vendors and conflicting information are scattered across the web.  With all the marketing hype about “solutions,” here are the facts to help break this down for you:

DCIM promises: capacity planning, energy efficiency, airflow optimization, asset management, and thermal mapping.  It offers to control and automate your data ecosystem, granting you governance and operational efficiency.  But does it really?  Without real-time information, you only know what DID happen and not what IS happening in the datacenter.

The ability to monitor your environmental conditions is vital, but they will not be accurate in the absence of real-time monitoring.  Knowing the location of a specific rack server is crucial for operational planning and efficiency, but if you do not have these items tagged, then your only alternative is to walk throughout the datacenter in search of the rack.  Without real-time updates, it becomes nearly impossible to manage critical events in the datacenter.  Leaks must be detected, heat must be managed, and airflow must be regulated.  In the event of a threat to an unplanned outage, an IT manager would need to react to a potential disaster right away.  However, without timely reporting, they could risk IT equipment failure costs that would average $5,600 per minute and $505,500 per event!

Think about it this way: DCIM that’s not in real-time is like buying a brand new Ferrari that you can’t fill up with gas.  Despite its sleek appearance, you won’t be taking full advantage of accelerating that V12 engine if your shiny new car sits motionless.  Similarly, DCIM is trendy and attractive to incorporate in your datacenter, but it’s simply not complete without real-time asset tracking and environmental monitoring.  Without our RF Code real-time solution, DCIM is really only DCI: Datacenter Infrastructure, lacking in Management.  This is why we “turbo-charge” your datacenter for optimization.  We put the “M” in “DCIM.”

Source: www.rfcode.com

The post The DCIM Necessity : When Big Data Becomes Massive Data appeared first on International Finance.