An industrial approach to Data Center management

This whitepaper from Atos’ Scientific Community describes the current Data Center norm, presents existing and upcoming monitoring tools, and describes how Command & Control solutions, from the industrial world, could be implemented in Data Centers to influence operations, reduce and optimize electricity consumption, and improve maintenance. It also elaborates on the Green for IT concept highlighted by Atos Scientific Community in Journey 2014.

After a short description of the equipment involved in the operation of a Data Center, the focus is put on growing electricity consumption, its rising cost, and the limited metering and monitoring capabilities that have been deployed to date. Global solutions based on sensors and actuators are discussed, along with their integration into state-of-the-art Data Centers, and their benefits. The paper then presents current solutions and future trends aimed at reducing power intake, or using the heat produced, supported by the basic physics required to achieve that.

While Data Centers could greatly profit from the C&C approach, deployment of the latter is a complex task that has to be planned from the beginning, meaning that existing Data Centers cannot benefit from it. The adoption of C&C will therefore be progressive and come from newly-built Data Centers. Atos, with expertise in both domains, is an ideal partner to accelerate the convergence of the two worlds.