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Cheat Sheets to Data Center Infrastructure Management

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Schneider Electric Table of Contents

Cheat Sheets for Data Center Infrastructure Management

Table of Contents

Introduction .................................................................3

How DCIM helps operations ........................................4

How DCIM helps planning ...........................................5

How DCIM helps analytics ...........................................6

Examples of how DCIM tools can improve traditional processes ......................................7


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Data Centers


IntroductionOnce upon a time, a data center operator managed a 15 rack data center at a small manufacturing firm. Because his facility was so small, he didn’t use any physical infrastructure management tools. Instead, he felt confident in and relied on the “tribal knowledge” he had acquired over the years. However, over time, his 15 racks became much denser. His energy bills went up and his cooling and power systems drifted out of balance. At one point, when he added a new server, he overloaded a branch circuit and took down an entire rack.

While this story begins with “once upon a time,” it is a true story, and illustrates just one set of challenges in managing a data center without the right tools. Data center infrastructure management (DCIM) tools enable organizations to plan, predict, analyze, and ultimately drive down costs. Without DCIM tools, the business value of the data center can improve only as far and as fast as the human brain will allow.

The following cheat sheets and illustrations provide a snapshot look at how DCIM software can improve planning, operations and analytics.

Each cheat sheet addresses:• CommonquestionsansweredbyDCIMtools• FunctionsthatcanbeperformedbyDCIMsoftware,and• ExamplesofhowDCIMcanimproveday-to-dayoperationas

well as long term planning and management

The illustrations provide examples of common workflows (ex. Load shifting, inlet temperature setting, CRAC fan loss) that can be dramatically improved with modern data center infrastructure management.

For an even deeper look into

the benefits of DCIM, read the complete white paper, “How Data Center Infrastructure Management Software Improves Planning and Cuts Operational Costs."

http://www.apc.com/whitepaper/?wp=107

http://www.apc.com/whitepaper/?wp=107



Data Centers


How DCIM helps operationsCommon questions that DCIM operational tools answer

• What is my current workflow?• How can I address hot spots?• What is the overall health of my data center?• I lost a fan on my CRAC. What do I do now?• My power capacity is exceeded on a rack, what

can I do?• What is my PUE?

Operational functions that DCIM software performs

• Track single & three phase equipment power draw, ensuring all three phases are balanced

• Illustrate power path down to rack, including measured load and rack capacity

• Report average and peak power usage by rack which helps ensure optimal placement of a new server

• Generate an audit trail for all changes to assets and work orders for a specified range of time, including a record of alarms raised and alarms removed

• Identify excess capacity and indicate which devices can either be decommissioned or used elsewhere

• Generate a power usage effectiveness (PUE) value on a daily basis and track historical PUE

• Communicate power, cooling, rack and other physical infrastructure information directly to a VM manager to ensure physical hosts have “healthy” power and cooling resources

What can happen WITHOUT DCIM software

• In a large financial data center, the provisioning and installation of servers became so complex that only highly paid engineers were able to do it.

• A data center manager in NY was concerned about provisioning a server in his London data center, and flew to London in order to place a Post-It® note on the rack position he wanted reserved, just to ensure the power and cooling could support the additional server.

• A mid-size data center was intentionally over-sizing their cooling capacity to avoid running out of cool-ing. They also had several servers underutilized.

• A data center operator installed 9 new servers in a nearly-empty rack. He checked that all the servers turned on and considered the installation a success. However, the next day the UPS had switched to bypass because the overnight load on the newly installed servers had peaked and over-loaded the UPS.

• A low criticality server was inadvertently installed in a high criticality rack (2N) instead of a rack with no redundancy. This error, discovered when decom-missioning the server, cost them 20 times more in electricity than necessary.

• A recently virtualized data center was allowing the VM manager to automatically move VMs based on compute requirements. They failed to consider the possibility of overloading the PDU and ended up crashing.



Data Centers


How DCIM helps planningCommon questions that DCIM planning tools answer

• Where does the next physical or virtual server get placed?

• Will I still have power or cooling redundancy under fault or maintenance conditions?

• Do I need to spread out my blade servers to get reliable operations?

• How will a new server impact the existing branch circuit?

• What will the impact of new equipment be on my redundancy and safety margins?

• Does the existing power and cooling equip-ment have the capacity to accommodate new technologies?

Planning functions that DCIM software performs

• Provide graphical representations of IT equipment and its location in the rack

• Visually display the impact of pending moves and changes on power capacity and cooling distribu-tion

• Simulate the consequences of power and cooling device failure on IT equipment for identification of critical business application impacts

• Proactively manage within rack and floor tile weight limits

• Simulate cooling scenarios in the data center with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approxima-tion

• Generate recommended installation locations for rack-mount IT equipment based on available power, cooling, space capacity, and network ports


• A data center with no real process for deploying equipment learned through an assessment that they had numerous hotspots. The air distribution was insufficient, even though the bulk capacity was available.

• A rack of servers was lost when an IT administrator unintentionally overloaded an already maxed-out power strip.

• A data center with no asset management tool had IT equipment removed from a rack. Since no auto-mated tracking of rack assets occurred, significant time was wasted trying to locate the misappropri-ated equipment.

• A data center was using the failover mechanism of their virtualization platform (ability to migrate their virtual machines), but in their planning, they didn’t consider that the servers were all dependent on the same UPS. When the UPS failed, no UPS protect-ed servers were available to migrate the loads to.

• A data center operator performed manual checks on racks looking for free space and a network port. Their planning consisted of feeling behind the racks to check if they were too hot, placing the new serv-ers in racks, and hoping for the best.



Data Centers


How DCIM helps analyticsCommon questions that DCIM planning tools answer

• What do I have in my data center?• Who has touched which equipment and when?• Do I have stranded cooling and power capacity?• When will firmware have to be updated?• By what date will the data center run out of

power and cooling capacity? What will run out first?

• When should batteries be charged on the UPS?• When will the next large data center physical

infrastructure investment be necessary?• How can I predict the need for future infrastruc-

ture, investments and rollouts?

Analytics functions that DCIM software performs

• Identify discrepancies between planned energy usage, based on nameplate information, and actual usage, based on actual power data

• Generate inventory reports organized by device type, age, manufacturer, and properties of the device

• Generate energy usage reports by subsystem • Provide energy use details that enable the linking

of operating costs to each business unit user group which then allows for “charge backs”


• An air conditioner has sufficient capacity, but inad-equate air distribution to the IT load

• A PDU has sufficient capacity but no available breaker positions

• Floor space is available, but there is no remaining power

• Air conditioners are in the wrong location• Some PDUs are overloaded while others are lightly

loaded• Some areas are overheated while others are cold



Data Centers


Examples of how DCIM tools can improve traditional processes

Load Shifting

CRAC fan loss

Intelligent Temperature Setting



Data Centers


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