Cloud Data Center Chinese Logistics Giant Capacity Planning and Improving Server Health Case Study

Intel® Data Center Manager lowers data center temperature, while improving provisioning efficiency and energy usage to deliver significant annual savings Business: One of China’s leading providers of comprehensive logistics solutions Challenges • Real-time cross-platform thermal and power monitoring and temperature control • Insight into energy consumption • Automated discovery and optimization for underutilized servers • Server-level centralized remote access capability • Server and environmental health analysis • Capacity planning Solution • Intel® Data Center Manager Executive Summary A leading provider of comprehensive logistics solutions headquartered in China installed Intel® Data Center Manager (Intel® DCM) in its Guangdong data center. The company initially deployed the solution across 600 devices to garner enhanced energy, thermal and health monitoring of its data center environment. Leveraging Intel® DCM, the company wanted to better manage server health, load balance more efficiently, analyze and remedy data center cooling issues, and gauge the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of multiple server models. The company currently operates over 10,000 servers across its data center network. The company deployed the Intel® DCM energy, thermal and health monitoring feature across a broad spectrum of Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) servers and safely raised room temperature in the data center by 5°C. The initial test deployment of 600 servers indicated that if Intel® DCM were deployed across all of the company’s 10,000 servers, the annual cooling costs of the data center would be reduced by $228,000 USD. Intel® DCM’s ability to deliver device-level power and thermal data also eliminated the need for intelligent Power Distribution Units (PDUs). Based on the customer’s current data center environment of 1,000 racks, the projected savings from this elimination would be $200,000 USD. Additionally, through Intel® DCM’s health monitoring and utilization capabilities, IT staff optimized server workloads and increased rack density by 30% during the test deployment, while postponing the need for new rack purchases. The added visibility and operational efficiency yielded for a 10,000 server operation would realize a potential annual savings of $700,000 USD. The overall estimated savings that the company would realize in deploying Intel® DCM would be $1,128,000 USD. Case Study | Intel® Data Center Manager Capacity Planning and Improving Server Health Figure 1. Intel® Data Center Manager Console Background One of China’s leading providers of comprehensive logistics solutions sought to increase efficiency, extend server life and save energy within their data center operation. Efficiently and effectively tracking shipments for their customer base necessitated the optimization and enhanced distribution of workloads as well as improved server mapping and the identification of problematic hot spots, while safely raising room temperature in the data center. Using the Intel® DCM single-screen Console, the company’s IT administrators quickly gained visibility into the 600-server test deployment and began aggregating and comparing data in real-time as well as assessing workloads to determine the cause of inefficiencies across their environment. The thermal and power data collected clearly identified areas for improvement and simplified the diagnostic process for the company’s IT department. Intel® DCM Thermal Health Monitoring Provides Precise Insight For Better Server Management Older data centers rely on broad and outdated practices such as maxing-out power consumption to compensate for poor thermal design and energy policy execution. Without actual server data to support decisions, data center policy measures have limited success. Moreover, a lack of visibility into actual power consumption leads to significant overprovisioning to maintain reserve margins. Leveraging