Virtualization in the age of data explosion

David Blumanis, data centre consultant - Asia Pacific Region, APC by Schneider Electric, talks to Sudhakaran of CyberMedia News, as to how APC by Schneider Electric is helping companies in virtualization and data center efficiency. Excerpts:

How do you see the possibility of virtualization in a changed global scenario? And what, according to you, are its challenges?

Virtualization is definitely increasing and after my meetings with several major CIOs in India recently, I observed that they are all looking at virtualization projects. Most decisions on virtualization are based on the technology and the benefits it will bring (space savings, energy reduction etc) but the consideration of the impact of virtualized environments rarely take into account the impact on the data centre infrastructure.

We see data centres regularly with major cooling issues, power consumption capacity issues, cable management issues, weight load issues as a result of deploying a smart IT technology. So the innovation has been to develop a complete 'High Density Zone' – power, cooling, enclosures and the IT servers and software as a complete high-density solution within an existing data centre.

APC, as a result, now has global strategic partnerships with all the major global IT vendors that provide virtualization solutions (IT) and with our solutions (power, cooling, enclosures) we together bring the complete solution for customers.

Could you brief about the functions of 'APC Trade Off' tool and how it helps enterprises in virtualization?

The APC Trade Off tool for virtualization that APC has released to customers for free, enables customers to design a complete solution (including power and cooling) and understand how many racks, power, floor space a customer will they need before they actually make a decision to virtualize.

For many corporates data explosion is a major challenge. How does APC help CIO's address the perennial issue of data centre management?

As far as managing data centre is concerned, we have a module called ISX Capacity Manager. Capacity Management at the IT layer has been here for years, but now capacity management needs to include power and cooling as the two domains are very closely linked. APC’s ISX Capacity Manager has the ability to understand the capacity (power and cooling) and free capacity within every rack.

Also it has the ability to model raised floor environments and to calculate/simulate airflow of various perimeter cooling solutions including third party, in addition to APC’s In Row cooling.

It can count network and power ports and recommend best location of new equipment based on availability of required ports.

Then, another important aspect is that it enables customers to calculate the weight of their equipment and take the rack and floor tile load limits into account when identifying best locations, reducing the increasing issue of fully loaded racks and their weight limits.

How is APC helping in Green IT and efficient power distribution, especially in reducing the energy wastage? What are the 'green' products that APC has in its kitty?

You know that Schneider Electric asserted its commitment to energy efficiency and determination to produce clean, secure and reliable energy through its role as a signatory in the Bali International Conference (United Nations) on combating global warming in January 2008. For the past five years, APC by Schneider has been spending spends more than $400 million a year in R&D to develop solutions and thought leadership for today’s problems.

APC by Schneider is a leader in energy-efficiency initiatives and it is the founding member of the Green Grid Schneider Electric Technology Center in St. Louis. Other initiatives include Schneider Electric Solution Centre in Bangalore, www.DatacenterUniversity.com, Proactive – Data centre design Tradeoff tools.

What are the management solutions the APC has tailored the IT environment of various enterprises and does it help enhance efficiency and productivity of companies?

APC by Schneider once again is the market leader with ISX Central. It provides a vast amount of new features, process and information for IT managers and facilities managers to operate their data centre environment in a new and micro level (not just room level). The latest version of ISX Central enables customers to build or integrate InfraStruXure Central with deployed management systems or dashboards, including Microsoft, IBM/Tivoli, VMWare, Cisco and others, as well as across Schneider building management systems.

The core data points provided include: rack output power, UPS load, UPS runtime, UPS input voltage, temperature, humidity, air flow, battery replacement status and battery status.

Also it provides a comprehensive mass configuration capability, allowing users to create, store and push the configuration out to similar APC devices with a Network Management Card.

ISX Central, along with ISX Capacity Manager allow APC customers to not only manage their energy, but for the first time have the eyes to see what is actually using the energy and allow customers to see where free energy works without compromising the facility.

ISX Central also allows customers to commence projects to remove energy hungry / lowly performing technologies with new efficient product and ISX Change Manager is the tool to manage change.

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