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Ralph Thomas, Client Services Director for DBSi, sums up the issue at hand: "Power for us is everything. If we have a problem with power or cooling, we need a way to quickly locate the issue and develop a work around. In the northeast, we are going through utility deregulation. We are expecting our energy bills to increase potentially 30 percent or more."
To improve their energy efficiency, Thomas explained that they needed a way to better track, display and manage the temperatures and cooling within the datacenters. DBSi knew that if they could increase the granularity of temperature and electrical power data points in the datacenters and report at near real-time, they would be better equipped to manage energy use without jeopardizing uptime. To explain why more data points would benefit the company’s control over power usage, Thomas gave the example of a pool of water. If there is hot water coming in on one end, there is no way to detect the rising temperature at the other end of the pool. The air flow through the datacenter is not a clean air flow; it gets often gets disturbed from various points in the room from non-uniform equipment deployments. So, to control cooling energy usage, very granular temperature and power usage data is needed throughout a datacenter or facility. With all that in mind, Thomas explained that they went looking to find software that could handle a lot of data points, from various sources. "We looked at other main stream solutions, with price tags ten times the cost and lacking key functionality. We felt that the Inductive Automation products gave us development speed and historical data functionality we were looking for at the right cost." Unlimited Tags Equals Unlimited Data Points
DBSi appreciated the unlimited tags and clients that came with Inductive Automation’s FactorySQL and FactoryPMI. It would allow them to build a system with as many data points and users as needed. "The unlimited aspect was a big selling point," said Thomas. "It was one of the key drivers in our choice to use Inductive Automation because we didn’t have to start licensing clients and limit people viewing the information. We have sales, facility, and operations staff all looking at different aspects of our infrastructure from multiple locations. It’s nice not to worry about licensing these users because we have about 20 to 30 clients running on any given day." Thomas said they have recently increased about 10-fold the data points within each facility. They are able to monitor power usage, the cooling infrastructure, temperature going in and out of the cooling infrastructure, the temperature above and below the floor, cold aisles, etc. All in all, Thomas estimates that there are more than 20,000 points of data flowing through the system and that keeps increasing every month as we expand the system and think of new ways of collecting data. Increasing Access to Information
Another benefit to the unlimited aspects of the software was that DBSi could let as many people as needed view the data via client screens. The system tracks and visually displays environmental and power utilization data within the buildings. This allows DBSi staff to monitor all buildings and data centers within the buildings remotely from the centralized operations center, as well as off site. For example, remote workers can check the status of a generator without having to drive in to the plant to look at it. "The software allows us to make complex representations of status and history information, quickly and accurately," Thomas described. "This software has been well designed and very flexible, allowing us to deploy our projects quickly and accurately." DBSi has found that it has increased its decision-making ability for the plant’s energy usage. It results in helping them account where power is being wasted which helps reduce operating costs while maintaining optimal cooling conditions. "Based on the richness of that data, we now can make business decisions or maybe turn some equipment on or off, depending on what we see in the data," Thomas said. "Now we can measure it and take action where we couldn’t take action before. We are able to react faster. We can see issues before they become problems. Because we now have such granular control, it gives us a competitive advantage." DBSi provides flexible, cost-effective and innovative IT solutions for companies that require exceptional support for critical business processes and environments. It operates secure, high performance, and highly available data centers in Bethlehem PA, Valley Forge PA and Allentown (Breinigsville), PA. DBSi serves over 300 customers in all industry verticals with a focus on financial services and healthcare. DBSi’s Hosting services include high speed wide area network connectivity, daily operational and administration management services, managed storage, data backup and restoration, and security management. DBSi’s Disaster Recovery solutions include traditional, dedicated and customized, workspace recovery and secure hosting. In addition to traditional tape based recovery, DBSi offers advanced recovery services including virtualization, real time data replication, remote backup, email failover and redundant data centers. www.dbsintl.com Ralph Thomas is joining Inductive Automation for a webinar on Thursday, April 22 at 9-10am PDT. The webinar will talk about how Ignition by Inductive Automation provides information that helps companies monitor energy usage. To register, click here.
Software Helps DBSi Use Less Energy
More Data Helps Company Use Less Energy
04/13/2010 - Energy consumption is more than just a hot topic these days. It’s a way of life for DBSi. The company provides managed datacenter services for its clients; inside each datacenter are hundreds of cabinets of computers, hundreds and hundreds of TB’s of storage and network equipment. All this equipment consumes large quantities of power and generates a lot of heat. The temperature in each datacenter must be monitored and controlled in near real-time to keep the equipment running.
A portion of the electrical infrastructure, shown here, monitored for availability and capacity. |
While energy consumption was an important design goal DBSi’s CEO, William Bachenberg, had a much larger vision. He wanted an integrated system which brought together the following;
- Real-time monitoring with exception reporting
- Control of critical equipment infrastructure
- Trend analysis to aid in preventive maintenance
- Utilize historical and present trends for capacity planning
- Energy consumption with revenue grade consumption reporting and bill back capabilities
- Seamlessly integrates with all existing equipment and protocols
- Secure remote access and redundant infrastructure
To improve their energy efficiency, Thomas explained that they needed a way to better track, display and manage the temperatures and cooling within the datacenters. DBSi knew that if they could increase the granularity of temperature and electrical power data points in the datacenters and report at near real-time, they would be better equipped to manage energy use without jeopardizing uptime. To explain why more data points would benefit the company’s control over power usage, Thomas gave the example of a pool of water. If there is hot water coming in on one end, there is no way to detect the rising temperature at the other end of the pool. The air flow through the datacenter is not a clean air flow; it gets often gets disturbed from various points in the room from non-uniform equipment deployments. So, to control cooling energy usage, very granular temperature and power usage data is needed throughout a datacenter or facility. With all that in mind, Thomas explained that they went looking to find software that could handle a lot of data points, from various sources. "We looked at other main stream solutions, with price tags ten times the cost and lacking key functionality. We felt that the Inductive Automation products gave us development speed and historical data functionality we were looking for at the right cost." Unlimited Tags Equals Unlimited Data Points
DBSi appreciated the unlimited tags and clients that came with Inductive Automation’s FactorySQL and FactoryPMI. It would allow them to build a system with as many data points and users as needed. "The unlimited aspect was a big selling point," said Thomas. "It was one of the key drivers in our choice to use Inductive Automation because we didn’t have to start licensing clients and limit people viewing the information. We have sales, facility, and operations staff all looking at different aspects of our infrastructure from multiple locations. It’s nice not to worry about licensing these users because we have about 20 to 30 clients running on any given day." Thomas said they have recently increased about 10-fold the data points within each facility. They are able to monitor power usage, the cooling infrastructure, temperature going in and out of the cooling infrastructure, the temperature above and below the floor, cold aisles, etc. All in all, Thomas estimates that there are more than 20,000 points of data flowing through the system and that keeps increasing every month as we expand the system and think of new ways of collecting data. Increasing Access to Information
Another benefit to the unlimited aspects of the software was that DBSi could let as many people as needed view the data via client screens. The system tracks and visually displays environmental and power utilization data within the buildings. This allows DBSi staff to monitor all buildings and data centers within the buildings remotely from the centralized operations center, as well as off site. For example, remote workers can check the status of a generator without having to drive in to the plant to look at it. "The software allows us to make complex representations of status and history information, quickly and accurately," Thomas described. "This software has been well designed and very flexible, allowing us to deploy our projects quickly and accurately." DBSi has found that it has increased its decision-making ability for the plant’s energy usage. It results in helping them account where power is being wasted which helps reduce operating costs while maintaining optimal cooling conditions. "Based on the richness of that data, we now can make business decisions or maybe turn some equipment on or off, depending on what we see in the data," Thomas said. "Now we can measure it and take action where we couldn’t take action before. We are able to react faster. We can see issues before they become problems. Because we now have such granular control, it gives us a competitive advantage." DBSi provides flexible, cost-effective and innovative IT solutions for companies that require exceptional support for critical business processes and environments. It operates secure, high performance, and highly available data centers in Bethlehem PA, Valley Forge PA and Allentown (Breinigsville), PA. DBSi serves over 300 customers in all industry verticals with a focus on financial services and healthcare. DBSi’s Hosting services include high speed wide area network connectivity, daily operational and administration management services, managed storage, data backup and restoration, and security management. DBSi’s Disaster Recovery solutions include traditional, dedicated and customized, workspace recovery and secure hosting. In addition to traditional tape based recovery, DBSi offers advanced recovery services including virtualization, real time data replication, remote backup, email failover and redundant data centers. www.dbsintl.com Ralph Thomas is joining Inductive Automation for a webinar on Thursday, April 22 at 9-10am PDT. The webinar will talk about how Ignition by Inductive Automation provides information that helps companies monitor energy usage. To register, click here.