EDITOR ’ S QUESTION

Mark Fenton , Product Manager at Future Facilities , defines a data center ’ s performance as being a mixture of many things and that each business will have different KPIs for their data center . He said : “ Whether the overarching goal is being green and efficient , cramming as much capacity as possible into the space , or to be as resilient to failure as possible ; the key to achieving it is in the design and redesign , of the data center .

“ The data center is a complicated system with many moving parts ; power , cooling , racks , IT , cabling and more . Usually , these are independently designed , assembled into one working system . Essentially , it means we flip a switch and hope it will work . However , it often doesn ’ t .”

Fenton went on to address the independent research commissioned by Future Facilities which found that one third of data centers see their facility ’ s temperature managed using rule of thumb and that 40 % then suffered outages in their data center because of human error . “ Data center operators must remember that when the parts of a data center are assembled , they will have a significant impact on one another . This can be no place for guesswork ,” he said .

“ For example , to have a well-designed white space , but a poor infrastructure layout on the roof will only result in bad data center performance . Equally , if you design an efficient rooftop configuration for the cooling infrastructure but don ’ t consider the white space layout , the end result is also likely to be poor performance . Data center operators need to consider the complete solution .

“ Luckily , there is a host of technologies available to enable data-driven decisions which will improve the design of the data center and its operational performance . One such technology is the Digital Twin . With this physics-based simulation , operators can prototype how those individual elements will operate together and ensure that they get a data center that is more than the sum of its parts .

“ We know once you hand over the keys , everything changes . Design decisions are replaced with real living , breathing equipment which may behave completely differently to the original specification . The Digital Twin can help operators to smoothly transition between the two and test out any real deployments virtually before the installation takes place . Having the freedom to fail , learn and adjust plans allows operators to find interesting , innovative ways to improve cooling and power , as well as turning wasted capacity into higher reliability and optimum performance .

“ This process of finding the optimal balance of saving energy and cost while maximizing performance saves money both in designing and operating a data center . It also helps operators to reduce the chances of downtime and manage load variation .

“ Ultimately , this enables them and their engineers to configure the data center to whichever KPI the data center is aimed at . The resulting resilience and optimum performance will keep customers loyal and the business running at a profit for the long-term .”

32 INTELLIGENTCIO www . intelligentcio . com