7x24 Magazine 2015 Spring

to know about what’s on the other

side of the connection; as an

individual user, you may never have

an idea of what kind of massive

data processing is happening on

the other end. The end result is the

same: with an online connection,

cloud computing can be done

anywhere, anytime.”

Oftentimes, when talking about

“the cloud” people will actually

look up into the sky, as if “the

cloud” is an ethereal, non-physical

entity. In reality, there is no single

“cloud” – there are many clouds,

both private and public, and behind

each cloud, there is substantial

physical infrastructure. To process,

store and provide data access, the

ubiquitous clouds utilize the same

type of data center infrastructure as

found in most companies, i.e., rack-

mounted servers, switches, storage

devices, firewalls, load balancing

and a host of operating systems

and security software. As the OPEX

and CAPEX benefits of leveraging

the cloud, and the economies of

hyperscale become clear,

investments in the infrastructure

increase.

IDC supports this expansion theory:

“The move to cloud computing is

driving significant spending on data

center hardware to support

businesses’ private cloud

initiatives… IDC also forecasts that

server hardware revenue for public

cloud computing will grow from

$582 million in 2009 to $718 million

in 2014, and server hardware

revenue for the larger private cloud

market will grow from $2.6 billion

to $5.7 billion in the same period.”

Taking this one step further, data

centers must also be supported by

a comprehensive power

infrastructure with several layers of

hardware redundancy. This means

massive amounts of electricity are

consumed by the data processing

infrastructure (servers, switches,

storage) as well as facility-related

equipment such as CRAE/CRAC

units, and the power distribution

and backup infrastructure.

Energy is the biggest expense

associated with the cloud’s IT

infrastructure. To keep business-

critical information always available

and reliable, cloud data centers

must operate 24/7/365 with no

downtime – requiring consistent

and enormous amounts of power

consumption. To put this into

perspective, worldwide data centers

consume 30 billion watts of

electricity – or enough to run 30

nuclear power plants. And based

on the NRDC data center efficiency

assessment: “In 2013, U.S. data

centers consumed an estimated 91

billion kilowatt-hours of electricity

— enough electricity to power all

the households in New York City

twice over — and are on-track to

reach 140 billion kilowatt-hours by

2020, the equivalent annual output

of 50 power plants, costing

American businesses $13 billion

annually in electricity bills and

emitting nearly 100 million metric

tons of carbon pollution per year.”

Now that the fog has lifted and the

cloud’s physical infrastructure and

power consumption are exposed,

another question arises: How do

these facility operators manage and

optimize these massive data

centers? To gain operational and

environmental insight many

managers are leveraging Data

Center Infrastructure Management

(DCIM) software. DCIM is the

unification of disjointed IT and

facility-related data into a single

informational source. The single-

source view provides a holistic

dashboard of data center

performance – displaying energy

consumption and environmental

temperatures for optimization,

capacity planning and alerts to

potential downtime.

DCIM brings an added level of

operational insight that helps IT and

facility managers understand the

interconnected relationship

between facility equipment and IT

racked-devices. This understanding

is the result of energy monitoring

sensors and software capable of

tapping into a Building

Management System (BMS) or

Building Automation System (BAS),

as well as directly into various

pieces of infrastructure, sensors,

Power Distribution Units, branch

circuit monitors, power strips, even

servers, to accurately aggregate

and analyze Power Usage