Data Centre Capacity Planning

One of the biggest trends within the data centre space in the past couple of years has been toward power conservation. Prior to that, the goal was to maximize space and pack in as much density as possible. The ‘green data centre’ message is now becoming the prevailing business driver. Increasingly data centre administrators are looking at how their resources are being used and which applications to virtualise and consolidate to save power. This is becoming increasingly important due to the Government’s Carbon Reduction Commitment scheme, meaning organisations are bound to better management of their power use.

Capacity Planning Tools

Software based data centre capacity management tools like Aperture and GDCM enable data centre managers to visualise and predict conditions, such as cooling and available physical space, so IT managers can tell how many blade servers they can theoretically install into their data cabinets for instance.

Whilst these capacity planning tools can appear to be a cure for all ills in the data centre, they are only as good as the information that they are populated with. Power consumption figures provided by server manufacturers , are typically overstated by as much as 25%. If your capacity planning application is using these ‘plate values’ then the capacity and efficiency of your data centre is immediately compromised.

Intelligent Power Management

The ideal solution is an ‘Intelligent Power’ solution capable of monitoring and managing the actual power consumption of each individual server and exporting this information along with the environmental conditions of each cabinet to your capacity planning platform. By doing so, the efficiency and capacity of your data centre will increase. You will be able to run higher densities of servers in each cabinet without the fear of power or thermal overload.

By installing “Intelligent Power” distribution units in each rack in the data centre a clear, accurate record of actual power consumption of each asset for a given period can be collected in a database. Reports created from this information can be used to plan data centre capacity and identify where servers can be installed and reduce energy costs by identifying when servers can be safely powered down.