Services

Data Center Capacity Management as a Service

Capacity Management is a technique that enables a Data Center Manager to measure the consumption of resources and forecast future infrastructure requirements while lowering costs and managing risk. There are four steps necessary to achieve good Capacity Management: (determine the business’s requirements, analyze current capacity, maximize the design potential and plan for the future).

Leveraging information that can be provided by your site personnel and Data Center management tool(s), combined with CFD modeling data, will baseline of the existing conditions.

Understanding the inter‐dependencies between space, power, cooling and air flow in the Data Center environment. Armed with this data, improvement scenarios can be run to determine impact to capacity and utilization, as well as energy costs

DCCMaaS Consulting Services include:

• Fast turnaround once site data is submitted

• A Digital Twin baseline model with accurate set of environmental measures

• Take a pro‐active approach to Add, Move and Changes

• If the add/move or change is outside the limit set – we get involved and offer a recommendation (simple

adjustment in the model or complex engineering design)

• Monthly Virtual Facility model(s) and Performance Assessment Report(s)

• Monthly Mechanical and electrical capacity reporting.

• A copy of the delivered report that is narrated by a Creative Facility Design SME enabling to you to show it

to others without having to be the expert

• Routine audits – customer choice (monthly, quarterly, semi‐annually, or annually)

• Virtual Facility model re‐calibration service and Performance Assessment Updates

• You own the data and can use it for future simulations reducing future analysis investment.

• All resulting simulation output data and input models are provided for your future use.

• Install and Manage an industry leading virtual capacity planning platform tool (DCIM software license sold separately).

• Software installation and Train customer on DCIM Software

Data Center Digital Twin

The Digital Twin is your data center, replicated in a virtual world. As a simulation, the Digital Twin gives you the visibility and foresight to take control of your data center’s performance and maximize the value of your data center.

Cut Capacity Costs – Control resource utilization to realize data center project’s business potential.

Safeguard Reliability – Meet service level agreement (SLA) requirements in a safe, virtualized environment.
Reduce Response Time- Streamline individual and collective efforts to manage your data center.

Times are changing and so should we. From rising digital demands to denser, more compact designs, thermal design and management are more difficult and important to prioritize than ever. Our solution? A software-defined methodology powered by simulation. The Data Center Digital Twin extends beyond the walls of the data center through our software suite 6SigmaDCX. Our toolkit simplifies both the design of components as well as their integration into the data center.

Digital Twin virtualizes the entire data center ecosystem: your components, your data center, your power and cooling network; everything. By creating this virtual world, we’ve extended the Digital Twin concept to the entire industry, which enables all stakeholders to work together quickly and effectively. Whether you work in the electronics industry or data center operations, we have a tool in our software suite that can help.

Data Center Design- Future-proof your DC designs by modeling, testing and verifying them – all before a single brick is laid.

Data Center Operations – Adapt to business demands by testing deployments in a safe environment prior to implementation.

Electronics Thermal Simulation – Overcome your thermal design challenges with unparalleled intelligence, automation, and accuracy.

Facilities Management

CFDesign’s use of industry-leading Facility Management tools, combined with our deep experience in every aspect of data center design and operation, will produce results that help you stay on top of your data center. We will work with you to create a “ Digital Twin” that models your external environment every single component of your datacenter and the Liquid side network as it is now or as it is planned (for a new data center).

Then, using industry-leading CFD modeling, in a full 3-dimensional representation of your data center, we can measure all important metrics such as PUE to let you manage your configuration and understand your risks and tolerances.

Of course, configurations change fast but with your Digital Twin defined and easily updatable, you will always be in control from that point forward. CFDesign provides you with a test bed in which you can evaluate/troubleshoot/and plan any modification to your data center.

Because all modeling is done in a virtual environment, you will never again need to worry about how any change or addition, no matter how large or small, will impact your data center.

What’s more, we can help you extend the useful life of your datacenter saving you money on an ongoing basis, delaying the need for a huge capital outlay, and improving reliability while lowering the risk of thermal failure. CFDesign’s Facility management approach offers the following tangible benefits:

• Infinite Possibilities – Create “what-if” installs, moves and uninstalls scenarios to test proposed configurations and their impact on heat and cooling, power, space, weight, performance and more. Not only can you model almost any scenario (right down to repositioning floor grills) but you can save hypothetical configuration sets for future consideration or comparison.

• Optimal and Insightful Capacity Planning – Using your Virtual Facility to model planned or hypothetical changes allows you to predict cost, reliability, performance metrics (e.g. PUE, DCiE, and IT inlet temperatures) all before they are implemented. For example. conduct thermal simulations to reset cooling limits on cabinets as IT layout deviates from original design loads.

• Troubleshooting – If you are already in a compromised situation, use your Digital Twin model to diagnose problems such as the cause of overheating equipment. Then, avoid costly mistakes by simulating the effect of proposed fixes before you actually make them.

• Excellent User Interface – Changes (reflecting actual data center changes or hypothetical) are easy using drag-and-drop functionality. The Digital Twin 3-dimensional view makes you feel like you are standing in it.

• Open Architecture Means Compatibility – Our tools will integrate with your 3rd party tools such as a DCIM and real-time monitoring systems. Importing and exporting data is easy, real-time, and without duplication of effort and the corresponding likelihood of errors.

Power Management

When you are designing a data center estimating tolerances in your raised floor is a challenge but at least you have the engineering flexibility to make changes in the design before building.

Once your data center is up and running, the problem of raised floor weight management is more daunting.

Whenever the decision to add or move equipment is considered, facility managers must consider the impact of the extra load.

Whether you are a design engineer specifying a new facility or a facility manager looking to make changes, CFDesign’s Weight Management approach helps you model the anticipated load in your Digital Twin raised floor. Benefits include:

• You set the Tolerance – You can either use standard load limits imposed by OEMs or you can specify your own tolerances based on corporate policy, environmental and business factors, or specific safety guidelines.

• Automatic Warnings – Any simulated change to your Virtual Facility which will violate chosen load tolerances will trigger an alert. And prevent you from making a costly mistake as well as preventing an actual unsafe situation.

• Flexible and Easy to Manipulate – Simulated installs/moves/uninstalls are easy to make using drag-and-drop functionality. Weight Management allows for different methods of floor contact (e.g., uneven weight distribution, with or without feet, etc.)

Energy Cost Savings

CFDesign offers many tangible benefits that help you optimize and manage data center configuration. What’s more, we can actually “fund our own efforts” through the energy savings we can create for you.

CFDesign Is prepared to prove it. The following chart shows a hypothetical example (rough estimate) of potential energy savings gained from allowing CFDesign to bring your data center into optimization. It is based on the current energy usage of a typical large data center.

Your actual savings will vary

When you engage CFDesign to conduct an audit of your Data Center (See Data Center Audit Service) we will prepare an Executive Summary that will provide a detailed assessment of your projected energy savings, customized to your data center. It will help you determine whether energy savings measures warrant further investigation and action.

A number of energy efficiency opportunities with varying payback periods will be identified during the assessment. Additionally, CFDesign will provide a report with a list of recommended next steps to formalize your energy savings goals. Here is a hypothetical excerpt of such a list:

Potential Annual Energy Savings–Hypothetical Example

* Potential Savings % (Site Energy) show the percent of your data center’s total current energy consumption that can be saved (i.e. potential savings % = 100 * (potential savings/current total energy use)).

** The potential cost savings for each breakout category is calculated by multiplying the potential energy savings by the total unit cost. In this example the cost of a kilowatt hour is $0.1199