DCIM Solution to Control Data Center Sprawl

- Maurice Donegan, director of product management for Emerson Network Power’s Avocent business (www.emersonnetworkpower.com), says:

Virtual sprawl results when different applications are added to handle various business processes, causing the automated solutions –put in place to manage demand in virtual environments – to populate virtual instances in an undisciplined way. Consequences include unbalanced power consumption and resource utilization.  

Emerson Network Power has introduced version 650 of its Aperture™ Suite with advanced software for data center planning, management and performance optimization. Key features respond to customer needs to manage and track virtual sprawl impact on the data center, gain dashboard analysis view on data center efficiency and manage integrated monitoring on data center devices.

While earlier versions of the Aperture Suite helped managers better understand the amount of resource consumption and where it occurs across the data center floor, the new version takes the next step of giving them insight into what is driving that consumption. By integrating with popular virtual management systems (VMware and Microsoft Virtual Machine Manager), now virtual processes can be mapped to their physical hosts to prevent infrastructure overloading and to identify underutilized resources. Armed with this knowledge, the data center manager can advise staff where to shift resources across the data center to more safely provide the infrastructure support they require.

In addition to helping control virtual sprawl, the Aperture Suite now offers high-level dashboards that deliver more actionable data center performance metrics. With the new dashboards, data center personnel can quickly see if efficiency numbers are being met, whether assets are performing correctly, which assets might be aging out and more – and can easily report this information to management.

In short, the latest Aperture Suite release enables data center managers to see more discreetly across the data center, evaluate all options and optimize resources to safely and efficiently to support demand. It also provides a wealth of performance data in a form that can readily be used to support management decisions.

Next Generation Data Center Planner Reduces Planning and Management Costs, Improves Energy Efficiency

- Traci Yarbrough, director of product marketing with Emerson Network Power data center solutions (www.emersonnetworkpower.com), says:

Emerson Network Power has introduced the next generation of Avocent Data Center Planner, an award-winning software solution that enables data center managers to make informed decisions for the planning and effective management of their data center assets and physical infrastructure.

This is the fourth release of Avocent Data Center Planner. This product is a component of Emerson Network Power’s extensive portfolio of data center infrastructure management (DCIM) capabilities.

The ad-hoc data center management tools that were effective in the past are increasingly difficult to maintain in today’s complex environment. Avocent Data Center Planner is an effective alternative to legacy management tools because it provides all of the detailed information that is required to efficiently plan and manage the physical infrastructure in one dynamic graphical interface. Customers realize an immediate return on investment because they no longer need to consult multiple point products to make decisions and plan changes. It also builds on our promise of delivering a simple and easy to use DCIM capability.

The product provides data center managers, who are under constant pressure to control and reduce costs, with accurate and complete information about where their devices and equipment are located, their current capacities and projected growth. This visibility enables data center managers to effectively implement and manage their consolidation, virtualization and energy efficiency initiatives.

The latest version of Avocent Data Center Planner enhances the product’s ease of use and simplicity while delivering superior power management, visualization and manageability capabilities. The new version provides:

• The ability to gauge “real-world” power usage to more precisely, manage capacity, extend the life of the data center infrastructure and anticipate issues that need to be resolved before an incident occurs. Configured to communicate with other industry products, the next generation management software will provide out-of-the-box support for Avocent PDUs, Liebert PDUs, Avocent DSView 4 and Liebert SiteScan Web
• End-to-end connection visualization will allow data center managers to capture and view the most realistic, current-state view of the data center. Additionally, when considering a move, consolidation or replacement, the connection data allows dynamic planning and faster approval of proposed changes
• Zone management provides the flexibility and control administers require to operate co-location/cloud environments
• Spanish language support which augments the support for Japanese, Chinese, German, Russian and French in v3.2

Avocent Data Center Planner is available worldwide now.

Cisco Unified Data Center: A Path to the World of Many Clouds

Orchestration of IT Service Management: The Glue that Binds IT Teams Together

- David Hurwitz, senior vice president of marketing at Serena Software (www.serena.com), says:

Service management systems are an IT department’s on-line face to the business. Sure, enterprise apps and personal productivity tools may be how users get their jobs done, but when someone in sales or marketing has a problem or needs something they turn to the IT service system for satisfaction.

That said, they are often disappointed, leading to dissatisfaction with the IT department in general. Left unchecked, this unfriendly face can lead to elevated service resolution costs, extended cycle times, and frustration within IT itself, all the while leaving end-users convinced that IT isn’t a suitable business partner.

Meanwhile back in IT, a process-based revolution has been declared. ITIL succeeded in defining IT service management processes in standard fashion, while shining a light on the need to become process-based. Activity-based approaches, ad hoc approaches, and disconnected silos are now properly frowned upon.

At the executive level, CIOs know all this and also know that their ongoing costs in rigid 20th Century service management systems are a disproportionately expensive part of their portfolio. Expensive, unfriendly and rigid is hardly a formula for success, especially for a system that literally defines IT in the minds of the vast majority of IT’s customers.

This untenable situation has led to the increasingly widespread adoption of SaaS ITSM offerings. These 21st century services help with the cost issue and are superficially helpful in presenting a friendlier face to the business. But, they suffer from rigidity and a failure to embrace true process automation.

The better approach is to orchestrate IT service management, whether delivered via SaaS or on-premises. Orchestrate? This means to automate ITSM processes in a way that they become transparent, configurable and connected. Orchestration leads to dramatic improvements in cycle time, compliance, adaptability and accountability, and in the end, helps bring Dev and Ops closer together.

Speaking of the “Dev - Ops Divide,” it has just narrowed significantly with the release of two breakthrough solutions: Serena Service Manager and Serena Release Manager. Serena Service Manager provides an easily configurable and flexible process-based approach to delivering IT services along with a unified service portal and integrated service management dashboards. The business user interface, Serena Request Center, gives end users one convenient view of all the services available to them and offers IT one funnel for routing requests.

Serena Release Manager dramatically speeds application delivery and introduces a new visual enterprise release calendar for both application development and IT operations. Both solutions are fully integrated and build upon Serena’s Orchestrated Application Delivery product strategy, which emphasizes process and automation.

Serena Software is a true technology pioneer. Since 1980, this Redwood City-based company has been serving enterprise customers from 29 offices in 14 countries with innovative Application Lifecycle Management solutions. Serena’s innovative line of products Orchestrate the lifecycle of an application from Demand-to-Deployment. Now Serena is doing the same thing for IT Operations: orchestrating it for efficiency, innovation and better customer service. Serena’s impressive customer lineup proves the enterprise market is paying attention.

Dev and Ops Divide. What Dev and Ops divide?

How to Earn Your Data Center Merit Badge

- Lori MacVittie, Senior Technical Marketing Manager at F5 Networks (www.f5.com), says:

Two words: be prepared.


The simple motto of the Boy Scouts is one that will always serve IT well, especially when it comes to operational efficiency and effectiveness in dealing with unanticipated challenges. It was just such a motto put forward in different terms by a director in the US Federal Government working on “emergency preparedness plans.” In a nutshell, he said, “Think about what you would do the day after and do it the day before.”

That was particularly good advice that expanded well on what it means to “Be Prepared.”

Now obviously IT has to be more responsive to potential outages or other issues in the data center than the next day. But the advice still holds if we simply reduce the advice to putting into place the policies and processes you would use to address a given challenge before it becomes a challenge. Or at least be prepared to implement such policies and processes should they become necessary. The deciding factor in when to implement pre-challenge policies is likely the time required. For example, if you lose your primary ISP connection, what would you do? Provision a secondary connection to provide connectivity until the primary is returned to service, most likely. Given the period of time it takes to provision such a resource, it’s probably best to provision before you need it. Similarly, the time to consider how you’ll respond to a flash-crowd is before it happens, not after. Ask yourself how would you maintain performance and availability, and then determine how best to go about ensuring that those pieces of the solution that cannot be provisioned or implemented on-demand are in place before they are needed.

EARNING the DATA CENTER MERIT BADGE

It is certainly the case that some policies, if pre-implemented as a mitigation technique to address future challenges, might interrupt the normal operations in the data center. As a means to alleviate this possibility it is advised that such policies be implemented in such a way as to trigger only in the event of an emergency. In other words, based on context and with a full understanding of the current conditions within and without the data center.

Contextually-aware policies implemented at a strategic point of control offer the means by which IT can “be prepared” to handle an emergency situation: suddenly constrained capacity, performance degradation and even attacks against the data center network or applications delivered from therein. Such policies and the processes by which they were deployed have traditionally been a manual operations’ task: push a new configuration, provision a new server or force an update to a routing table. But contextually aware solutions provide a mechanism for encapsulating much of the process and policy required to address challenges that arise occasionally in the data center.

You need infrastructure components that are capable of adapting the enforcement of policies with little to no manual intervention such that availability, security and performance levels are maintained at all times. That’s Infrastructure 2.0 for the uninitiated. These components must be aware of all factors that might degrade the operational posture of any one of the three, incurring operational risk that is unacceptable to the business. By leveraging strategic points of control to deploy contextually-aware policies you can automatically respond to the unexpected in many cases without disruption. This leads to consistent application performance, behavior and availability and ensures that IT is meeting the challenges of the business.

Similarly, when considering deploying an application in a public cloud computing environment, part of the process needs to be the asking of serious questions regarding the management and future integration needs of that application. Today it may not be business critical, but if/when it is – what then? How would you integrate that application’s data with your internal systems? How would you integrate processes that rely upon that application with business or operational processes inside the data center? How might you extend identity and application access management systems such that cloud-hosted applications can leverage them?

Being prepared in the data center means you need the strategic platforms in place before they’re necessary and then subsequently requires that you lay out a set of tactical plans that address specific challenges that may arise along the way, noting the specific conditions that “trigger” the need for such measures in order to codify the “day after” procedures in such a way as to make them automatically provisioned when necessary. Doing so improves the responsiveness of IT, a major driver toward IT as a Service for both IT and the business.

Fulfilling the requirements for a data center merit badge is a lot easier than you might think: consider the challenges you may need to address, formulate a plan, and then implement it. Then wear your badge proudly. You’ll have earned it.

What's Your Data Center Strategy? Build or Retrofit?

- Bill Kosik, Principal Data Center Energy Technologist at Hewlett-Packard (www.hp.com), says:

Why are the HP Critical Facilities Implementation service and Flexible Data Center useful in today's enterprise data centers? Why should data center and IT managers care about it? How can they benefit from it?

Aging data centers are forcing many organizations into a corner. Many are running out of space, have insufficient power or operate in environmental conditions that threaten business continuity.

Clients considering their data center strategy might be unsure whether to retrofit their existing data centers or to build new from the ground-up. The decision to build or retrofit is not a simple choice and will have major financial and operational repercussions. Organizations expect data centers to last a long time, so careful evaluation of the entire IT space and the company’s critical assets portfolio over the long term is required.

There are essentially three options available:

1. Implement small, tactical operational improvements
2. Build a new data center
3. Retrofit an existing data center

Segments of the data center industry are undergoing a rapid and significant transformation that can potentially meet the need for more modular, scalable, reliable, energy efficient, and cost effective facilities. Now-a-days monolithic data centers are only being used for certain, specialized uses. Other than these, the rest of the industry has shifted towards modularity and scalability.

Whatever the chosen strategy, it is important to design new or refreshed sites accordingly, delivering faster time to economic value, increased utilization and capacity as well as lower energy, operation and maintenance costs. Such data centers will have a converged infrastructure – more energy efficient, more reliable, and with greater flexibility.

HP is an expert integrator for the planning, design, building and commissioning of data centers – from concept to commissioning, and beyond. We help businesses get the most of their data centers by combining our facilities consulting, design and assurance services together with turnkey construction project management.

HP’s Critical Facilities Implementation (CFI) service simplifies the process of designing and building data centers by offering design, construction and project management from a single vendor. With HP CFI, clients can lower their cost of ownership by having a single integrator that delivers all elements of a data center design-build project from start to finish. For organizations looking to build new data centers or expand existing facilities, CFI provides a holistic approach, streamlining the process for faster builds at lower costs.

In addition to HP’s consulting and support services to design and build data centers, HP also offers a new data center design that cuts the capital investment required for the data centers in half while reducing an organization’s carbon footprint. HP Flexible Data Center (HP Flexible DC), a component of HP CFI, offers a industrialized, modular approach to designing and building data centers that allows clients to replace traditional data center designs with a flexible solution that can be expanded as needed while conserving resources.

The Flexible DC has a unique design concept termed the “butterfly” which features four prefabricated data center modules that stem off a central spine housing administrative and other functions. Several different options for power and cooling topologies are available, based on the functional requirements and the climate in which the data center is located. The final product looks like a traditional brick-and-mortar facility but is designed and constructed using a very efficient industrial process, where major portions of the data center are built and tested off-site and assembled in the field. This allows for a very fast design and construction process that optimizes both first cost and on-going costs.

Where should the HP Critical Facilities Implementation service and Flexible Data Center rank in terms of overall priority in the data center?

We believe these services should be very high priorities. The HP Critical Facilities Implementation service is a natural first step for organizations looking to develop a roadmap for data center growth. This service converges technology with strategic facilities planning to cover all aspects of client needs, whether they are updating an existing data center or building new from the ground up.

Clients, such as financial service providers, government entities, and cloud and colocation hosts, will find the scalable and modular nature of HP Flexible DC a compelling option. We help organizations innovate the way they build and operate a greenfield data center for greater savings over its life span. Clients rely on our strategic facilities insight and experience globally – this includes mature geographies as well as major growth markets like China and India, where we are currently providing these CFI services for large-scale data centers.

What are the biggest challenges for data center and IT managers when it comes to HP Critical Facilities Implementation services and Flexible Data Center?

Data center facilities are undergoing a sea-change. Today’s power and thermal requirements for IT equipment are strongly influencing and in some cases changing the way electrical and cooling systems are designed. Monolithic data centers, once a hallmark for reliability and availability, are no longer economically viable, nor sufficiently flexible for today’s business environments.

Modular design, as it is applied to a traditional brick-and-mortar data center, will offer improved flexibility and lower construction costs over a monolithic data center. But using this approach still requires both infrastructure and IT space for future expansion. While a definite improvement, modular design might still be too costly and for some enterprises.
These and many other complex decisions must be made before starting the design and construction process. Obtaining the data necessary to make these decisions requires a partner with highly specialized engineering expertise and a rigorous process to help clients understand the key technology trade-offs and financial and performance impacts.

How can data center and IT managers overcome those challenges?

HP Critical Facilities Implementation services help organizations overcome the headaches caused by a fragmented design-build process. Funneling the entire process through a single integrator creates continuity and gives organizations an end-to-end experience. Leveraging the Flexible DC design also eliminates future hassles when expanding data center facilities as an organization’s technology needs increase. The flexible design facilitates expansion and significantly reduces build time.

As a result of using HP’s CFI service and Flexible DC design, organizations are able to experience faster build times for data center facilities at reduced costs. While cutting capital investment, the faster build time also allows organizations to realize benefits quicker and expand without business disruption.

What advice can you give to IT and data center managers that have a plethora of similar solutions to choose from?

HP is the only vendor that can offer a full turnkey design-build offering without having to partner with outside consulting design or construction management firms for elements of the solution, such as design engineering and the creation of blueprint drawings. Similarly, no other vendor can execute a comprehensive data center implementation plan. With HP, organizations can avoid a fragmented approach to their data center design-builds. Working with HP provides clients with a controlled, end-to-end experience resulting in faster design and build time as well as reduced costs.

What Constitutes a Good Data Center Design?

- Chris Loeffler, Data Center Applications Manager, Distributed Power Solutions, Eaton Corporation (www.eaton.com), says:

What constitutes a good data center design?

Today’s best data centers are designed from the concept stage through the entire service life of the facility, with the following three objectives:

1. Availability and uptime of the enterprise-related applications that “pay the bills”. Make no mistake: Reliability and availability trump every other consideration in data center design.
2. Flexibility for future growth. The data center must be able to support the business’ expected growth, usually for a period of 20 to 40 years. That means infrastructure decisions must be made with great forethought and an eye toward both current conditions and possible conditions a couple of decades from now. Also, equipment and support services will likely be “changed out” several times over the data center’s lifecycle, and this must usually be accomplished without disrupting the data center’s work. Therefore, you must build in the flexibility to make those kinds of change while still maintaining services to your users.
3. Efficiency in power and water usage, and deployment of environmentally-sustainable materials and processes. LEED compliance, at some level, is a requirement for virtually all new data centers and for most data center upgrades. No longer can the enterprise simply assume that uptime is the only thing that matters. Efficient and responsible use of resources is good for the financial bottom line, and necessary for businesses to maintain their good standing in the community.

Why is a data center's design important for an enterprise's success?

The huge cost of installing new, and upgrading existing, data centers make the stakes very high. Almost all businesses nowadays rely heavily on data processing and Internet communications. They’re no longer a luxury; they’re a requirement of doing business. Many companies are rendered instantly helpless when a data center suffers a failure. There is often a huge loss in revenue and goodwill when these disasters occur. Bad press can be particularly damaging and result in customers departing, possibly never to return. So the data center must be designed for maximum reliability and extensive flexibility. It must be capable of withstanding multiple system and infrastructure failures while continuing to service customers. Downtime is no longer an option.

What key considerations go into designing a data center?

1. How large will the facility need to be? Do I want one huge building, or does that place “all my eggs in only one basket”? Do I have enough room to meet my needs over the next 20 or 30 years? How big is too big? Can I operate efficiently in the early years of the data center’s life?
2. Where do I locate the data center? Is adequate and upgradeable power and water available? Is it wise to locate the center in a downtown area where power disturbances may be frequent? Is a rural location better? Can my staff access the facility in inclement weather? How does my location affect my cost of power and cooling?
3. Don’t forget security. Can the facility and its staff be protected from intrusion and disruption? What is the backup plan when problems or failures occur? Is there a Plan B and C? Do I invest in one or more disaster recovery facilities to fall back on during a hurricane, earthquake, or other calamity?

What pitfalls can designers and builders typically fall into?

The biggest pitfall is not being able to predict the future. No one can do that, of course, but experienced engineers and consultants can provide invaluable advice, based on their real-world knowledge. Don’t forget to set up a Plan B and Plan C to address unexpectedly rapid growth, or the need for disaster recovery provisions.

In addition, avoid the temptation to invest in technologies and processes that do not show a clear return on investment for your business. Very expensive projects are too often undertaken without a clear view of when (or if) they will pay for themselves. Remember that even though a data center is a nerd’s paradise, it’s still a functioning business, and the financials must make sense. Every part of the data center must have a defined goal and a defined ROI. The data center manager will typically be measured on both meeting the company’s performance and reliability goals and on the project’s time to payback.

What advice can you give to a company that is looking at several different design/building companies?

Give at least three companies a chance to present. Ask every question that comes to mind, even the obvious ones, and look for clear answers based on the firm’s real-world experience. This is not the time to take a chance on a new designer, engineering firm or architect, so don’t risk your multi-million dollar data center on anyone who hasn’t proven themselves. Question them specifically on how their solution is more reliable, more flexible, and more efficient than the alternatives. Don’t accept vague answers. They should be able to provide tangible evidence of how their recommendations will benefit you. Look for something you can hold in your hand, or better, place in your wallet. Don’t put your faith in promises. Demand to see results.

What constitutes a good data center design?

- Tom Deloye with Technology Management, Inc (www.tmiamerica.com), says:

What constitutes a good data center design?

These days good data center DESIGN includes attention, as a corporate priority, to efficiency of space, critical support systems and IT equipment as well as the monitoring and data collection of the operations. Then together with consideration of design best practices, traditionally including provisioning a scalable and secure facility envelope (e.g. raised floor area, support areas, clear height, floor load and secure access),a floor plan configuration with proper room adjacencies, hot and cold aisle layout preferably with aisle containment and ducted returns for higher density environments, raised floor, without obstructions below, to achieve optimum air-flow and maximum delivery of cool air from the plenum to the inlet destination as well as well segregated overhead distribution of power and cabling. The enterprise class or corporate data center(s) enjoys high visibility within the organization for reasons including the delivery of and reliance upon corporate information services including at-risk applications, ecommerce platforms, storage, networking as well as the associated annual IT spend. Good DESIGN will directly assist the corporation to maximize its return on investment in the data center and to realize efficiencies in its use.

Why is a data center's design important for an enterprise's success?

DESIGN is the key ingredient and driver of everything connected to your data center project including timely and within budget completion, day one and future capacity (e.g. 5 and 10 years forward), integrated and sustainable operations, scalability, reliability and resiliency. Good DESIGN simply cannot be underestimated and should be prepared at the hands of licensed and certified professionals (e.g. architects and engineers) at the project onset. DESIGN simply provides you with the reliability, scalability and efficiency your business requires with your primary IT asset, the data center. DESIGN is more than the production of construction plans and documents; a lot more. As with all DESIGN, it must first be responsive to the client’s business model and its criteria, then must address the specific requirements of the client’s location, physical space and budget constraints.

Our experience shows us that those with poor DESIGN pay the price and will typically experience an unfair share of damaging ills. It’s just a matter of time. The most visible being the unplanned outage to their data center. It’s tough to pencil the total cost of poor DESIGN yet we know at $2,000 per square foot to build a Tier 3 data center, excellence in DESIGN is an absolute necessity and which shall pay dividends throughout the life cycle of the data center.

What key considerations go into designing a data center?

For the enterprise class data center several keys to the data center DESIGN include collection of raw data from the client or end-user including anticipated day one load, load density, space envelope, growth factor in server deployment, IT hardware, electrical consumption and trend data, and the approved budget. Good DESIGN will include scalability of the facility and it’s systems to allow growth and enhancements to achieve the DESIGN tier rating if not accomplished initially.

What pitfalls can designers and builders typically fall into?

The most obvious pitfall is when the DESIGNER or BUILDER take shortcuts with expertise, scope, design, budget, materials, construction execution, procurement of the critical support systems and delivery of equipment. The project lead must have an awareness of what is documented on the construction drawings, the schematics, the shop drawings, the milestone schedule and that which is not documented or illustrated but should have been together with alternatives at the ready in case of unplanned obstructions. There is zero tolerance for error in planning, design, build and commissioning of systems execution. Facility solutions after the fact are often costly and introduce risks to the operation.

What advice can you give to a company that is looking at several different design/building companies?

It is wise to look at several factors prior to making the decision. The company’s due diligence of the candidate design/build companies, we recommend, should include investigations of relevant projects for scope, complexity and results, as well as the candidate firm’s PM process, management, business practices, assigned project leadership, in-house resource qualifications to support the project and their pricing.

The good news is that facility solutions are available and can solve many of the acute and/or chronic issues/challenges in your existing facility. Careful though, as some solutions will only extend the useful life of the existing facility and they may be costly. The significant problems may be best solved, strategically, in the alternative with relocation to or building a new facility. We advise our clients to take a holistic approach with their data center and through our data center optimization assessment we can provide the information you need to set course with recommendations, risks, pricing and timeline. The assessment, prepared by licensed professionals, is a very cost effective tool to gain an objective and independent report of your critical environment.

Does Data Center Size and Shape Matter?

- Wally Phelps, product marketing manager for AdaptivCool (www.adaptivcool.com), says:

With IT equipment becoming both denser and more capable; many Data Centers while they face serious power and cooling challenges are finding space is becoming much less of an issue than in the past. The result for many is unused space in the Data Center. The other challenge many face is Data Centers being fit into existing office buildings into available space. Let’s address some of the issues these factors can cause.

How does a data center room's shape and size impact data center cooling?

Since air is the predominant cooling medium, its properties and characteristics must be understood to solve any significant cooling challenge. Data Centers move a lot of air so it’s usually turbulent; tumbling and swirling throughout the room which makes it hard to predict without the help of some tools like CFD. Laminar airflow by comparison is easy to predict but has limited application in studying Data Center Airflow.

Being a fluid, air will always take the path of least resistance. We like to say “Air is Lazy”. Room size and shape plays a big part in where this “Lazy” air chooses to go. Like herding cats it doesn’t always go where you would like, without a little help.

Before the consolidation takes place however there needs to be an assessment of the cooling available in the consolidated area and a study both supply and return paths. For the supply path Downflow CRAC units have a maximum underfloor throw of roughly 30-40 feet, (less if there are many perforated tiles in this path). This needs to be used as a guideline. Thus if you are trying to place IT equipment farther than 30- 40 feet from a CRAC there will usually be a problem. For the return side there needs to be a low resistance path for the warm air to return directly to the CRACs. If this air has to follow a circuitous path it will promote mixing and poor efficiency. Hot Aisle/ Cold Aisle configurations are of course recommended with CRACs at the ends of the rows. Often times there may be corners of the Data Center that have CRACs at right angles. Caution needs to be applied since these right angle CRACs can cause vortexes under the floor and reduce available flow from a few tile locations. To detect this, lift the tiles in the locations where perforated tiles are planned to insure there are no “dead spots” where cool air does not billow out of the open tile hole. If there is a dead spot, there are active underfloor air mover products that can solve this.

If consolidation is not possible then look for lower density portions of the room that can be targeted to reduce cooling air flow, so this capacity and energy can be used elsewhere. Of course

Factors to consider how COOLABLE a specific data center may be:

Rack layout – Hot/Cold aisle is best with long unbroken rows. Pay attention to maximum row length based on how far the CRAC units can throw air. A random or non hot/cold aisle layout will always compromise efficiency and capacity by allowing mixing.
Racks should be placed at least 6 feet from CRACs.

CRAC orientation – The CRACs should be at the ends of the rows to allow cooling and heat to flow easily in and out of the rows with the minimum amount of mixing.

Raised floor height – As a general rule a 10K sq ft data center should have a minimum of 2 feet. Smaller sites can get by with less, Larger sites need more.

Underfloor obstructions – Obstructions close to CRAC units cause the most problems. As you get farther away from the CRACs they become less intrusive. Cable trays and other large obstructions should be limited to the hot aisles if possible.

Shape - Square or rectangular rooms will usually be easier to cool.

Floor cutouts – These should be sufficiently small that excess air is not leaking out to spaces that don’t need cooling.

Ceiling height – Below 9 ft it is often difficult to get good return air paths.

Ducted ceiling returns or containment – Properly engineered these always improve the cool ability of a data center. Special attention must be paid to local fire code enforcement which varies widely.

Blanking panels – These prevent recirculation of hot air from the back to front of a rack. If there in not enough CFM being delivered to the front of the racks however blanking panels won’t help

If your Data Center is sub optimal in any of the areas above there are solutions that can remedy most if not all issues. Air is relatively easier to move than Facilities or entire rows of IT racks.

Healthcare Issues Impacting the Data Center

- Alan Watson, Data Centre Director at Logicalis (www.logicalis.com), says:

Budgets are shrinking but requirements are growing and the complexity of changing applications is a challenge to most organisations. Over the last 12-18 months or so there has been a growing requirement to make IT more dynamic to address the needs of the business and its users, not just IT for IT sake. Making applications available anywhere and at any time but in a reliable, secure way.

Historically the healthcare industry has been slow to adopt true centralization and virtualization as it is seen as difficult to make the user experience good enough.
Technology has changed and true benefits can now be shown. The use of truly virtualized IT solutions not just servers or storage has been available for some time. This makes “on demand IT” a reality and as such the business benefits in reacting to current and new requirements as well as making IT more cost effective.

Architectures that enable SOA and there use with WEB 2.0 type interfaces makes tailoring applications much easier and in turn user friendly. In turn this enables benefits across the board and allows changes to be made easily, allowing health care staff to have an input into what they need in a way they want to use.

Top Issues In Health-based Data Centers

- Bob Romero, senior director of information technology at Johns Hopkins University (www.hopkinsmedicine.org) , says:

Data Growth
Perhaps the proper term is Data "Explosion". All aspects of data generation and storage are on the rise with digital imaging leading the way. It is not uncommon to see certain data types grow 30%-50% per year requiring data centers to house larger storage solutions. The multiplier effect for backups and testing representations of this data compound the problem in both disk and tape solutions. The net result is a substantial footprint for storage devices and corresponding power consumption for these elements. Data de-duplication will have a profound impact on stemming the affects of the data explosion in both primary and secondary storage.

Cost Containment
Johns Hopkins, as with most Academic Medical Centers, has embarked on cost containment and energy conservation initiatives over the past several years. Substantial improvements have been noted from the deployment of server virtualization technologies that have reduced the capital and operating costs of large fleets of servers. The same approach is being investigated for similar savings in the client workstation/desktop arena throughout the Hospital. The direct impact to the data center will be the backend servers that house the virtual clients that will be deployed. We project a sizeable deployment of servers to host these virtual clients.

Power Consumption
Most data centers are facing the real limitations of power availability and increasing costs. The growth of server farms and the associated storage growth as outlined above continue to demand more power that is at a premium in some geographies. Major capital investments must be made to upgrade power and cooling plants to house these systems. The combination of points made above only serve to increase the power consumption in the data center with additional application and infrastructure servers. Further virtualization and consolidation of computing platforms on more efficient technologies will continue to be the focus of containment to flatten the growth curve in many areas of the data center.

Healthcare Issues Impacting the Data Center

- Louie Caschera, chief information officer of CareTech Solutions (www.caretech.com), says:

Top issues facing healthcare enterprises today include application demand and application access, as well as cost containment and quality of service.

Application Demand
As healthcare providers utilize and depend on clinical applications such as computerized physician order entry (CPOE) and electronic medical record (EMR) systems as tools to help provide better and safer patient care, the demand to have these applications available to them around the clock increases. To meet and support this demand, the data center delivering these applications would require uninterruptible service.

One approach to resolving these issues centers on partnering with an IT outsourcing company such as CareTech Solutions that provides managed IT services and delivery solutions to meet these demands. A second approach would involve hosting a critical application in an existing data center that is built with an uninterruptible infrastructure, meaning that the facility never goes down. At the system level, where the application resides and runs, the system itself should be configured to be highly available by utilizing technologies such as virtualization, clustering and SANs. At the network level, the network itself should be fully redundant to ensure delivery of the application and patient information. This includes leveraging redundant cores with diverse and redundant communication paths capable of delivering the applications (via Citrix) to the caregiver’s device.

Application Access
Increasingly, caregivers are requiring access to their critical clinical applications and patient information not only whenever it’s needed, but wherever it’s needed. This requires a robust networking infrastructure capable of securely delivering the clinical-application and patient information to the caregiver no matter where they are.

If a caregiver is roaming through a hospital (or off-site) and needs access to a critical application to retrieve patient information, an access device must be available, (be it a laptop or PDA, or a hospital’s workstation or laptop on the floor).

In order to accommodate application access from wherever it’s needed, you will need supporting technologies in your data center as well as the field.

In the data center, where your application resides you need an application delivery technology which would help allow the caregiver access from wherever it’s needed. Aside from using your WAN to connect the data center to the hospital, adding the use of the Internet and Citrix to your data center infrastructure will enhance the capability of supporting application access from “wherever.” Using Citrix to front-end your application in your data center represents the most versatile technology available, and would allow delivery of your application to “wherever.” Using Citrix, a caregiver using a PC, laptop or PDA would not only be able to access their critical application from the hospital through its WAN back to the data center, but also from “wherever” if the PC and its browser can connect to the Internet.

Wireless technology is becoming essential in the hospital as a method of connecting the caregiver to critical applications from anywhere in the hospital. Wireless technology lowers the cost of operation and ownership because it eliminates the need for individual workstation cable drops throughout the hospital.

Quality of Service
Addressing and/or resolving the above two issues certainly helps put the healthcare enterprise into a better position when providing quality care. Caregivers can access patient information whenever and wherever it’s needed, which helps doctors, nurses and medical staffs make better, faster and more informed decisions when it comes to patient care. Given the challenged economy and an increased level of competition between hospitals and health systems for their share of the patient population overall, hospital and health-system CIOs are under intense pressure to justify the investments they make in technology, and to demonstrate – in real dollars and cents – the resulting return on investment.

Patients who know they’re cared for promptly and comprehensively at a hospital are much more prone to return to that hospital for care in the future, and to recommend that hospital to friends, family and others as well. The fact is, data centers enable the technology as a tool that enables the kind of high-quality and efficient patient care that keeps patients coming back, and well-satisfied and loyal patients grow the bottom line.

Cost Containment
From a data center perspective, cost containment means utilizing and leveraging technologies such as virtualization, SANs, Citrix and clustering to lessen administrative management requirements and increase productivity. The efficiency and productivity of doctors, nurses and medical staffs is directly connected to technology’s ability to enable and exemplify those qualities – and to do so with little to no need for oversight. The same is true for a hospital’s data center, since cost savings bred from establishing and maintaining a data center facility are quickly negated if that facility must be managed by staff whose time could be better spent elsewhere in the hospital setting.

The fact is, there are many forward-looking technologies on the horizon that can help hospitals stay ahead of the technology curve and preserve data in new and exciting ways, further streamlining the patient care experience and enabling hospitals to protect patients and their data continuously – all while containing costs. For example, hospitals’ cross-country synchronous replication costs for 1 TB of data have decreased dramatically over the past several years, from millions of dollars in 2002 to approximately $100,000 today, boosting the practicality and affordability of replication for all healthcare systems with minimum oversight and maximum potential for cost containment.

The Benefits of Data Center Colocation

- Randy Fougere, Vice President of Marketing at Fusepoint (www.fusepoint.com), says:

There are two distinct categories that organizations usually fall into and each presents unique challenges and opportunities. The first category includes companies that have already invested in their own data centre space. Many of these are facing costly upgrades needed to maintain the integrity of their infrastructure. The question on the minds of executives in this scenario is “should we use our cash and credit to upgrade our data centre, or should we use those funds to increase sales or improve efficiencies?” Most companies asking this question would consider outsourcing as a way to leverage the resources and expertise offered by a Managed Service Provider (MSP). For companies requiring significant investments in technology or facilities, this option eliminates the need for a large capital expenditure and offers a predictable monthly cost model instead.

The second category includes start-ups and existing SMEs rolling out new applications. Building highly available infrastructure from the ground up involves significant capital costs and energy. If companies go that route they also need staff with the skills and certifications needed to ensure their mission-critical applications keep running. This is a key reason most small to mid-sized companies are prime candidates for outsourcing. These companies also face many of the same security challenges as larger organizations but often lack the resources to stay ahead of the threat curve. So how do they level the playing field? Many choose to leverage an MSP that employs leading security and network talent and spreads that cost over hundreds of other customers. This provides smaller organizations access to those resources and skill-sets at a much lower cost than doing it in-house.

What are the advantages of co-locating?

There are many variations and definitions of co-locating but the typical industry reference of “ping, power and pipe” refers to a Managed Service Provider (MSP) provisioning data centre space, power and the required bandwidth. In this scenario, the client manages their own hardware, bandwidth, security, backup and operating systems. Many MSPs also offer a menu of additional services to augment the client’s needs. A key benefit of co-location outsourcing is that depending on the robustness of the facility and its network architecture, high-availability can be achieved. The other reason companies co-locate is to gain the advantages of a more redundant and secure facility while leveraging previous investments in their own technology and people. An alternative offered by more advanced MSPs is known as Fully Managed Hosting. In this arrangement, the MSP procures and manages the entire infrastructure including hardware, operating systems, security, bandwidth and backup, all supported with the guarantee of a Service Level Agreement or SLA. All the client needs to do is remotely manage their business-layer applications.

Outsourcing

If a small to mid sized company is running a business that does not depend on technology to significantly support its operation, provide revenue streams or build brand value based on its web presence, outsourcing to a top-tier provider may be more than is needed. If the answer to the question “how long can I be down before I really feel it?” is “days”, then home-built solutions or low-end shared hosting may be adequate. In addition, when outsourcing to a Managed Service Provider, your organization will be bound by their acceptable code of conduct in terms of how you use their network and what passes over it, but for most companies this is not an issue.

Will they save any money?

If a business relies on IT infrastructure to survive, the organization will need to make heavy investments building redundancy within their server, security and network technologies. Resiliency also needs to be addressed at the facility level in areas such as power and cooling. This entails significant costs for backup systems such as Uninterrupted Power Supplies (UPS), diesel generators, backup cooling systems, and so on. On the human side, managing mission-critical infrastructure involves 24x7 staffing of high priced and often scarce talent. In addition, you need to have best-practice process in place to ensure continuous operations and deal with the inevitable technical issues that arise.

In comparison to the costs, companies can definitely save money by outsourcing since the service provider can spread their costs over many clients over many years. The other savings often overlooked is opportunity cost. Outsourcing saves a tremendous amount of capital and energy that companies can redirect towards their core competencies. An important cost savings applies to companies processing online credit card payments. Increasingly, these organizations will need to be compliant with stringent Payment Card Industry - Data Security Standards or PCI-DSS. By outsourcing to a provider that is compliant themselves, a client can leverage the provider’s audit to save significant expense. Some businesses in this scenario have saved over $100,000 by outsourcing their infrastructure to a qualified Managed Service Provider.

Examples of types of enterprises that should seriously consider Leasing/Co-locating.

Enterprises running truly mission-critical applications should always consider outsourcing their infrastructure. Unless you are actually in the data centre business, achieving an “always available” and “always secure” environment is extremely costly and very distracting. Given this, small to mid sized companies in particular should look to leverage the resources and expertise offered by a Managed Service Provider (MSP).

Although a natural fit for smaller companies, enterprise-class customers who manage their own data centres will also “selectively” outsource some of their critical applications to an MSP as part of their business continuity strategy. In this scenario, the “primary” site is managed in the clients own data centre with a “secondary” site in some state of readiness at an MSP’s facility. The other reason an enterprise client may outsource is if the MSP has some unique strengths in fully managing the infrastructure that the client does not. Skills in managing the infrastructure layer of products such as Oracle, Linux and VMware are good examples.

A particularly strong fit for outsourced infrastructure is the “Software-as-a-Service” or SaaS business. Companies that develop and serve “killer applications” using an on-demand model have readily embraced the concept of outsourcing. These companies understand that downtime means a direct hit to their bottom line and they also need to be highly scalable as their business grows. This is a good example of how companies leverage outsourcing to focus on what they do best.

Technology provides tremendous opportunity for companies to increase revenues, improve productivity, and reduce costs. Organizations continually struggle to answer the question: “how can we maximize the impact of our applications, when we are so focused on the infrastructure?” After all, the real benefits of IT are derived from leveraging innovative software, not running hardware and operating systems.

Leveraging the resources and expertise of a Managed Service Provider (MSP) provides a viable way for companies to save money, time, and effort. Co-locating the infrastructure at an MSP is a good starting point given the cost and management required at the facilities level. Engaging other “enhanced co-location” services such as bandwidth management, security, and backup provides even greater peace of mind and allows increased focus on your core business. At the high end of the spectrum, choosing an end-to-end Fully Managed Hosting solution offers the technology and management of all components including the hardware, bandwidth, backup, operating systems, web and database infrastructure, all at for fixed monthly fee.

Once, you have made the decision to outsource, choosing the right MSP is another important exercise. There are variances in the level of service you can expect and all MSPs operate differently. Key factors to consider are:

• The quality, physical security and redundancies the MSP has built into their facility
• The diversity of bandwidth providers and redundancies built in the MSP’s network architecture
• Standard operating procedures used by the MSP and the third-party audits and certifications undertaken to ensure they adhere to industry and regulatory best practices
• The technical certifications and expertise of the MSP’s operational staff and the ability to provide complete 24x7 support
• The level of focus the MSP has on the hosting business – typically, the level of focus correlates to the level of responsiveness and customer attention

WeBuyUsedTape Needs Your Used Tapes

- Norm Hutton, DTC Computer Supplies (www.webuyusedtpaes.net), says:

When dealing with sensitive data stored on magnetic tapes and optical storage media, data security is of the utmost concern for most companies. This concern comes to the forefront when the media reaches the end of its useful life cycle for your organization. WeBuyUsedTape is the industry leader in data eradication and media certification.

How do you properly eradicate data in the most cost-effective and secure manner? Our data eradication service provides complete secure eradication of all data from tapes, protecting your hard-earned reputation and trustworthiness by preventing confidential information from falling into the wrong hands. Many companies misrepresent themselves and only “broker” the sale of used media. Our time tested eradication processes ensure secure eradication and required processes to meet today’s state, local government, industry specific regulatory compliance requirements, customer and employee privacy legislation, and security mandates. All data eradication is performed at our secure location in California. As a result, our clients are insulated from exposure to legal liabilities or loss of corporate assets.

Why should you trust WeBuyUsedTape with the data eradication of your used tapes and disks? We are a family owned business with over 30 years in the data tape recycling business. We have been in the same company owned facility for over 20 years. Our data eradication methods are compliant with the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act (HIPAA), Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, Electronic Communications Privacy Act, Computer Matching and Privacy Protection Act, Computer Security Act, and Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) regulations as well as D.O.D. (Department of Defense) standards for data destruction.

Do not just throw away your used media. Your data is not safe. There are typically two ways to make sure data is completely eradicated and cannot be recovered: One is to degauss the media and the other is to re-write over the existing data, full length, every track, and every bit sector position. Media products such as 3480, 3490e, 8mm, DLT, and SDLT can be degaussed and the media reused. However, LTO, 3590, 3592, 9840, 9940, and T-10000 cannot be degaussed without destroying the servo track(s). For these media types, Certification requires data destruction using modern methods which do not destroy the servo track.

All data is destroyed using cartridge and drive manufacturer approved processes prior to ever being read. We guarantee the security and confidentiality of your data. We handle tens of thousands of pieces of media each month. We have never had one instance or breach of data security. Our track record speaks for itself.

DCIM Finds and Removes Orphaned Servers and Drives Down Data Center Costs

- Craig Ledo, Director of Product Marketing, nlyte Software (www.nlyte.com), says:

In a recent interview Jonathan Koomey, Stanford University consulting professor, scientist, author and energy-efficiency expert talks about the solutions for the top four challenges in the data center. One challenge he discusses is the underutilization of equipment that leads to a high cost per computing transaction. Koomey says, “Most servers in typical business data centers are utilized at only 5 to 10 percent of their maximum capacity, and cooling and power distribution systems are also used to much less than their full potential. Clearly, that’s wasted capital, and it makes the cost per computing transaction much higher than it needs to be. A secondary effect is that the fixed energy costs for running servers at low utilization make the cost per transaction much bigger than it needs to be.”

“For every kilowatt-hour of IT electricity use, there’s another kilowatt-hour for supporting equipment — cooling, fans, power distribution, and air flow,” Koomey continues. “This is overhead that doesn’t result in more computing, and the more we can reduce it the better.”

One way to reduce this power consumption is by unplugging “orphaned” servers that are turned on and drawing power, but are not doing anything.

There is no question that knowing where all your data center assets are and what they are doing can help you better utilize your power, cooling and space. However, according to industry analysts 17 to 20% of servers in the data center are orphaned. A solution to this problem is to discover what assets are productively working and discard those that are not.

These unused servers are wasting enormous amounts of power and cooling bandwidth in a time when energy costs are skyrocketing and there is a need to reduce carbon emissions. By using a new class of tools, dubbed Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) by both Gartner and Forrester Research, a data center manager can easily identify orphaned servers and other under-utilized assets. Once identified, they can model the effects of removing that equipment to free up space and drive down power costs. Additionally, DCIM includes auto-allocation capabilities to determine the optimal location to place new equipment to avoid creating hot spots and make the most efficient use of power, cooling and space in the data center.

Finding and removing orphaned servers is just one way DCIM extends the life of the data center, drives down costs and enables data canter managers to manage their environments with accurate data, visibility and agility. In fact, Gartner recently reported that DCIM can lower overall data center operating expenses by up to 20% annually. With energy consumption savings being a hot topic between facilities and IT management, more and more data center managers are turning to DCIM solutions for help.

Vitrualization Readiness: Keep It Moving

- Andrew Hillier, co-founder and CTO, CiRBA (www.cirba.com), says:

Momentum is key to many virtualization initiatives, and anything that can “stall” an initiative should be avoided. Failure to plan for adequate power and cooling can cause outages and/or force organizations to under-populate racks, causing projects to fall short on their goals to reduce floor space.

We see an increasing requirement for physical-to-rack, or “P2R” analysis. This is the process of modeling the utilization of physical servers based on the VMs they are hosting, and using these models to analyze servers into available rack capacity by using power consumption, U-factor and BTUs as constraints. This not only helps ensure fully loaded virtual hosts don't overstress data center real estate, but allows alignment between the physical and logical aspects of the data center. For example, by modeling more advanced constraints on rack placement, such as application connectivity, security zones, resiliency requirements and other key considerations, the physical design of the infrastructure can fine tuned to match the needs of the applications it supports.

Another factor can impact the physical design of the data center is workload mobility, and in particular the ability to “motion” virtual machines between physical systems. Because this allows workloads to move between racks, rooms, and even data centers, it can have a revolutionary impact on application availability and disaster recovery. But the benefits this provides is closely tied to the physical design of the infrastructure, as you need to have the right capacity in the right physical location at the right time. For example, for virtual environments that span cabinets, cabinet failure analysis allows organizations to determine if a virtual environment will be able to re-balance itself across the servers in the remaining cabinets. If this analysis detects vulnerabilities in the physical design, it may be necessary to adjust rack locations, PDU associations and even the entire design of the data center in order to provide the necessary resiliency.

Enterprise Protection The AVTECH Way

- Michael Sigourney, Senior Product Specialist at AVTECH (www.avtech.com)

One of the worst issues an organization can face today is experiencing damage to their infrastructure. This scenario could result in thousands of dollars in lost revenue, productivity or important data. The #1 cause of unplanned downtime in data centers and other facilities where expensive equipment is housed continues to be temperature and/or other threatening environmental conditions including: power loss or failure, humidity, flooding, fire, intrusion or security, airflow, light and more. Because the average data center temperature will rise from the standard 68° F to over 85° F in about 8.6 minutes when a problem arises (i.e. power outage or aircon failure) the staff in charge must be alerted and take immediate action. AVTECH’s Room Alert and TemPageR products monitor for these conditions and alert users if and when a problem occurs.

After twenty years of software development, AVTECH has found themselves in the unique position of being the only true software developer in the IT & facilities environment monitoring market. This is a critical difference as hardware can be studied or copied to create similar products. However, it is the software that controls how a product works, provides the web or application interface, determines the level of reliability, and makes a product easy to understand and use for customers.

AVTECH Solutions:

PageR Enterprise (PageR) is a world leading software solution for network-wide server, device and event monitoring of multi-OS environments. PageR provides a central event console that can collect, filter and display status and event information for all server, TCP/IP, SNMP and other devices or issues on local or worldwide networks. Events, whether normal status updates or critical warnings, can be flagged to automatically and immediately trigger alert notifications to remote personnel via computers, mobile phones, email and more. PageR can even run scripts and commands or launch applications automatically when events occur.

PageR is very unique in the range of events and servers that it can monitor, from the basic "Are you there?" network pings to complex computer room environment monitoring, server or power crash detections, web page monitoring, "deep" monitoring on legacy systems, and much more. On Windows NT/2K/XP/2K3/VISTA/7 servers, any event written to an Event Log (i.e. System, Security, Application) can be used as a trigger for immediate remote notification and corrective action. PageR allows notification to individuals, groups, hierarchies, different people at different times and for different issues. Users can set up redundant methods of notification, scheduled checking, dependencies and blackout periods. And, if users need to connect to PageR remotely, like while visiting a remote work facility or from home, they can use the PageR web browser interface to make system checks or configuration changes from anywhere in the world via the internet!

Device ManageR also comes free with the purchase of any AVTECH IT & facilities environment monitoring product– TemPageR or Room Alert. Device ManageR is an all-in-one solution for discovery, management, logging, graphing, alerting and more. Complete with its unique range of features, Device ManageR runs as a Windows Service for security and is ideal for managing single or multi-unit deployments of Room Alert or TemPageR network-wide. Device ManageR automatically discovers units across the network and allows users to immediately be informed when environmental thresholds are passed (i.e. temperature too hot, power loss, humidity too high, water leak, etc.). Alerts are sent via email to mobile devices such as computers, mobile phones, BlackBerrys, iPhones, and PDA’s.

Device ManageR also allows users to automatically log sensor data for one click export, view graphed data over a user-specified amount of time with the ability to toggle between graph and sensor displays, monitor alert status for multiple units, set monitoring thresholds, set multiple IP addresses, update firmware and more. Device ManageR greatly enhances the value of Room Alert and TemPageR, making it easier for users with multiple units to discover, manage, update firmware, copy settings to multiple units, consolidate data logging and graphing, etc. Device ManageR also provides unlimited discovery of Axis Network Cameras and acts as a single interface for viewing real-time images for all cameras found on the network via a single IP address.

Room Alert 26W
Room Alert 26W is AVTECH's most advanced hardware solution for "IT & Facilities Environment Monitoring, Alerting, Automatic Corrective Action & Wireless Sensor Monitoring". As one of the first “wireless” environment monitoring solutions to hit the IT industry, the Room Alert 26W sets the industry standard for range of features and reliability. With the possibility to monitoring up to 86 total sensors (60 via wireless technology), the Room alert 26W allows users to monitor for computer room temperature, humidity, power, flood, room entry and much more in multiple locations while utilizing wireless sensor technology to reduce or avoid the hassle of running sensor cables. Room Alert 26W's Wireless Sensor Hubs (WiSH) and Wireless Sensor Hub & Powered Relay’s (WiSPR) communicate via a secure, private protocol that is ZigBee compatible, allowing users the ability to monitor large numbers of sensors both indoors and out up to almost a mile away. The Room Alert 26W package allows users to log environment sensor status for immediate alert notification, historical review and graphing. Alert notifications via email, email-to-SMS, SNMP and more communicate to devices like computers, mobile phones, iPhones, BlackBerrys, pagers and PDAs. Room Alert 26W comes standard in a 1U 19" configuration and offers an easy to use web browser interface for settings changes and viewing real-time sensor status from anywhere.

Room Alert 26W monitors environments such as phone or wiring closets, critical rack cabinets, large computer rooms or data centers, multi building facilities and facilities of all types and sizes. It is connected to the network via Ethernet and does not require a host PC for operation. WiSH and WiSPR sensors communicate directly with Room Alert 26W to monitor almost anywhere. This means inside a rack cabinet, air vent, sub floor or other location... even outside or locations where you can't run a cable.

Room Alert 26W includes built-in sensors for temperature, humidity, power and flood. It even includes a built-in UPS to get the alerts out when a catastrophic power failure occurs. Room Alert 26W is perfect for any location, although a must when running cables may be difficult or impossible. It offers enterprise level monitoring at a reasonable price, affordable for organizations of all types and sizes, as it lists for less just $995. No other product allows so many sensors to be monitored or includes the many options available with Room Alert 26W. It will help protect valuable equipment and other important assets to minimize downtime and reduce losses if a disaster does occur. It is the environment monitor of choice for today's most demanding IT & facilities manager.

Room Alert 26WO
Room Alert 26WO is AVTECH's Room Alert 26W… without wireless. It is designed to monitor computer room temperature, humidity, power, flood, room entry and more in multiple locations up to 900' away. The Room Alert 26WO package allows users to log environment sensor status for immediate alert notification, historical review and graphing. Alert notifications via email, email-to-SMS, SNMP and more communicate to devices like computers, mobile phones, iPhones, BlackBerrys, pagers and PDAs. Room Alert 26WO comes standard in a 1U 19" configuration and offers an easy to use web browser interface for settings changes and viewing real-time sensor status from anywhere. Room Alert 26WO allows for connection of up to 26 sensors.

Room Alert 24E
Room Alert 24E is AVTECH's advanced hardware solution for "IT & Facilities Environment Monitoring, Alerting & Automatic Corrective Action". As one of the most popular products in the entire industry and in the Room Alert line, it is designed to monitor computer room temperature, humidity, power, room entry and more in multiple locations up to 900' away. The Room Alert 24E package allows users to log environment sensor status for immediate alert notification, historical review and graphing. Alert notifications via email, email-to-SMS, SNMP and more communicate to devices like computers, mobile phones, iPhones, BlackBerrys, pagers and PDAs. Room Alert 24E comes standard in a 1U 19" configuration and offers an easy to use web browser interface for settings changes and viewing real-time sensor status from anywhere.

Room Alert 24E monitors environments such as phone or wiring closets, critical rack cabinets, large computer rooms or data centers, multi building facilities and facilities of all types and sizes. Room Alert 24E is connected to the network via Ethernet and does not require a host PC for operation. It includes built-in sensors for temperature and humidity. Room Alert 24E allows for connection of up to 24 digital and switch sensors. Switch sensors can be attached to monitor for conditions such as power, flood, smoke/fire, room entry, airflow and much more.

Room Alert 11E
Room Alert 11E is one of AVTECH's hardware solutions for "IT & Facilities Environment Monitoring, Alerting & Automatic Corrective Action". It is designed to monitor computer room temperature, humidity, power and more in multiple locations up to 900' away. Room Alert 11E allows users to log environment sensor status for immediate alert notification, historical review and graphing. Alert notifications via email, email-to-SMS, SNMP and more communicate to devices like computers, mobile phones, iPhones, BlackBerrys, pagers and PDAs. Room Alert 11E offers an easy to use web browser interface for settings changes and viewing real-time sensor status from anywhere. Room Alert 11E allows for up to 11 total connected sensors.

Room Alert 4E
Room Alert 4E is AVTECH's entry-level hardware solution for "Advanced IT & Facilities Environment Monitoring, Alerting & More". It is designed to monitor computer room temperature and other environmental conditions in multiple locations. Room Alert 4E monitors for conditions such as temperature, humidity, power, flood/water, smoke/fire, room entry, airflow, heat index and more. The Room Alert 4E package allows users to log environment sensor status for immediate alert notification, historical review and graphing. Alert notifications via email, email-to-SMS, SNMP and more communicate to devices like computers, mobile phones, iPhones, BlackBerrys, pagers and PDAs. Room Alert 4E offers an easy to use web browser interface for settings changes and viewing real-time sensor status from anywhere. Room Alert 4E includes a built-in temperature sensor and allows for connection of two (2) additional digital temperature and/or digital temperature humidity sensors, one (1) external power sensor and connection of an external light tower. Listing at just $355, it is the most cost effective environment monitor of choice for today's most demanding IT & facilities managers.

Signal Tower Combos
AVTECH’s Signal Tower Combos include all of the same features as the Room Alert 4E with the addition of an included mounting bracket, external tower light and tower light connection cable. They are designed specifically to monitor computer room temperature and environment monitoring in multiple locations up to 900' away, while visually and audibly alerting staff when issues or events occur.

Signal Tower Combos integrate easily with any SNMP enabled device on the network. The visual lights and audio alarms can be turned on or off via SNMP Trap or SNMP Set commands. This capability allows the Signal Tower Combos to be mounted in any location where the tower lights are highly visible and can be activated by alarms detected by the connected sensors or by other devices remotely anywhere across the network.

TemPageR
TemPageR is the world’s most popular hardware solution for "IT & Facilities Temperature Monitoring, Alerting & Automatic Corrective Action". TemPageR was one of the first products AVTECH ever developed and has continued to hold a strong place in the market today. At just $225, it is designed to monitor computer room temperature in multiple locations. Like all AVTECH solutions, TemPageR allows users to log temperature sensor status for immediate alert notification, historical review and graphing. Alert notifications via email, email-to-SMS, SNMP and more communicate to devices like computers, mobile phones, iPhones, BlackBerrys, pagers and PDAs. TemPageR 3E offers an easy to use web browser interface for settings changes and viewing real-time sensor status from anywhere.

TemPageR includes a built-in digital temperature sensor and monitors environments such as phone or wiring closets, critical rack cabinets, large computer rooms or data centers, multi building facilities and facilities of all types and sizes. TemPageR is connected to the network via Ethernet and does not require a host PC for operation. TemPageR is a high value, low cost solution; perfect for any SMB that houses critical equipment, sensitive to temperature and the environment.

-- AVTECH Software Inc. (AVTECH) of Warren, Rhode Island is a private corporation founded in 1988 that develops and manufactures hardware and software solutions designed to protect today’s advanced IT data centers and other facilities. AVTECH’s unique combination of hardware and software has led the company to become one of the fastest growing providers in the ‘IT & Facilities Environment Monitoring’ marketplace.

Current customers include every branch of the U.S. government and military, over 80% of the Fortune 1000, 37 of 50 states, all provincial governments in Canada, United Nations, Microsoft, SAP, Oracle, Google, Yahoo, Amazon.com, Apple, IBM, Hewlett Packard, UPS, Federal Express, Boston Celtics and many thousands more.

Data Center Planning: Begin Before You Start

- Vince Arpa, president of Data Center Design (www.dcdonline.com), says:

Start considerations for your data center very early in the overall project discussion. For example, if this involves a relocation to a new facility or a major renovation of the existing office facility, make sure the data center is addressed early. Too often the Data Center negotiation for office space is done prior to Data Center requirements are considered.

Who should be involved?
For help outside your company, look for experts in the field. Get references. For involvement inside you company, start with the CIO and head of facilities. Each should assign a project manager with management authority that is backed up directly by the CIO and Facilities manager.

How can you avoid common mistakes?
Underestimating future needs. Many years ago there was a perception in the industry that the data center would continue to shrink and eventually disappear. That perception still exists today with the development of blade servers an virtualization software. However, the continued demand for more and sophisticated software and online data, the data center has survived, grown and become more sophisticated itself as it has established itself as the most critical real estate in the company.

The Uptime Institute is one organization that has identified levels of criticality as "Tier" levels. The more critical the Data Center is to the operation of the business, the more redundancy and reliability has to be built into it.

Building Your Data Center: Don't Forget Planning & Documentation

- Ron Hughes, president of California Data Center Design Group (www.cdcdg.com), says:

Planning and documentation are the key.Your OPR should document your project goals, the design criteria for your data center, (how you expect the data center to perform), your redundancy and reliability requirements, energy efficiency and sustainability or LEED criteria, as well as testing and commissioning requirements at the end of the project. It should also be updated as decisions are made on the project.

Have one person in charge - groups are not recommended.The larger the group, the less likely you will be able to get a decision quickly when needed and the less likely you will be to get everyone together when a critical decision has to be made. Having a single point of contact for decisions even if they have to sell their decisions to upper management is always preferable.

Prequalification of design firms and contractors is critical. While most companies in business today are very capable, experience counts when it comes to data centers. Experienced firms have already learned from their mistakes and won’t repeat them on your job. Making sure that firms bidding on your project have completed similar projects within the last 5 years will go a long way towards ensuring the success of your project.

How long should it take?
If there are planned outages required, it might extend the timeframes dramatically. We have one data center remodel we’ve been working on for a year and a half and are still not finished. They only have one window every 6 months where work can be done that has the potential to impact the data center.

Design build tends to be faster, but you are definitely dependent upon the design skills of the contractors. One solution that works well for data centers is to have a data center design firm do the conceptual design and then have design build contractors complete the for construction design documents. You can then have the design firm provide peer review services to make sure that the final design is consistent with the intent of the conceptual design.

You’d be shocked at how many large projects there are where nothing has been completed and yet they still want to commission as if it were. You can’t do a functional test of a system that isn’t functional! You can’t do an integrated systems test if all of the systems have not been started up and are fully functional! You can’t test UPS systems if the cooling for the UPS room isn’t completed.

Building a Data Center: Tips for a Smooth Process

- Michael Petrino, vice president at PTS Data Center Solutions (www.PTSdcs.com), says:

How can you ensure a smooth process?

Do not let prince be your guiding factor. When selecting a professional services firm, have a weighted ranking system when evaluating potential candidates (experience, references, overall impression, price, and approach). It is important to have synergy with your vendors, as much of your communication will be over email or phone, even with vendors who are local. I also recommend taking meeting minutes after conference calls and distributing them after the call, similar to construction meetings. 

Construction meetings are very important and are more effective when scheduled on Tuesday or Wednesday, this allows for Friday deadlines and helps set the direction of what needs to be accomplished that week as well as to plan to any weekend work ahead of time. 

How do you know who to involve in the process? 

The team needs to be diverse both internally and externally. Start with an executive sponsorship, followed by an external data center consultant. The following are also key: 

• Architect: many jurisdictions require an architect be involved as the design authority as you have life safety considerations. So, a firm with data center experience is a positive attribute that can be augmented with a data center consultant. 
• Engineering: (mechanical, electrical, structural) all of these trades will be required and their knowledge of how these different systems work together is imperative. 
• Move consultant: the task of moving your critical IT infrastructure should not be left to your local office moving company. This is an important detailed task which involves building rack elevations, labeling devices, labeling cables, unracking, packing and moving properly in bins, followed by unpacking and installation at the new location. 

A list of imperatives. 

• Process: stick to the design process, by skipping steps we often find that the result is change orders and schedule delays. 
•  Design team: it is important to have the design team involved in the construction process to offer continuity and consistent results. 
•  Contractors: clients are often initially please with the low bid price but that can quickly change to displeasure in the long term when the contractor produce poor quality work due to inexperience. It is imperative to select contractors that have familiarity working in data center environments. 

This is an excellent opportunity to make policy changes as you improve your data center. Things such as limiting access, improving security, and physically separating the production environment form test or development equipment. Improve the organization of the environment and take steps to get the unnecessary storage out of the data center.
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