Cloud Data Center Leading IT Networking Solutions Provider Reducing Energy Consumption and Costs Case Study

Intel® Data Center Manager delivers significant annual savings through optimized capacity planning, thermal management, and power capping Business: A global IT networking solutions provider based in Europe Challenges • Real-time power and thermal monitoring • Data center utilization • Increase energy efficiency • Efficient data center operation • Efficient cooling management Solution • Intel® Data Center Manager Executive Summary A global IT networking solutions provider installed Intel® Data Center Manager (Intel® DCM) in its data centers, deploying the solution across 1,000 devices in a two-month test deployment to gain greater insight into power and thermal monitoring, power capping implementation, and improved capacity planning. The provider currently operates over 6,000 servers across its data center network. Using the Intel® DCM cooling analysis, the provider’s IT staff was able to drive higher temperatures in the data center, identify underutilized servers, save energy by power capping, increase rack density, and avoid a substantial investment in an expensive asset management system. They also improved their data centers’ Service Level Agreements (SLAs) by identifying hotspots and server hardware component failures. Intel® DCM enabled IT staff to reduce data center operations costs and improve overall Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), thus increasing energy efficiency. The original test deployment of 1,000 servers indicated that if Intel® DCM were deployed across all of the company’s servers, the annual costs of the data center would be reduced by $230,000 USD. Intel® DCM’s real-time power monitoring and ability to control power consumption (power capping) allowed IT staff to implement a power capping strategy to save power, and thus realize a potential eight percent annual savings across 6,000 servers, amounting to $14,000 USD. The solution also allowed them to safely raise server room temperatures. For every 1°C the temperature was raised in the data center, Intel® DCM would return an annual savings of $30,000 USD. Intel® DCM identified hardware component failures that the IT team was able to repair or replace with little or no loss due to downtime, yielding an annual savings of $57,000 USD. It also made it possible to improve rack density, realizing an estimated savings of $23,000 USD annually. Furthermore, Intel® DCM helped the Case Study | Intel® Data Center Manager Reduces Energy Consumption and Saves Data Center Operations Costs Figure 1. (Top) Before - servers are overcooled; (Bottom) After 1 degree increase of temp set-point Figure 2. Row level thermal maps identified server starvation, misuse of blanking panels, and other thermal issues IT team to identify underutilized servers. Leveraging this data, they were able to replace End-of-Life (EOL) servers, as well as consolidate and virtualize underutilized servers, yielding an annual savings of $23,000 USD. Finally, Intel® DCM also eliminated the need for a substantial investment in an asset management tool, saving the networking provider an additional $85,000 USD. Based on Intel® DCM deployment results, the anticipated savings of deploying the Intel® DCM solution across the company’s 6,000 servers is $690,000 USD over three years. Background A global IT networking solutions provider installed Intel® DCM in its data centers for power, thermal and health monitoring. The IT staff looked to diagnose, troubleshoot and monitor the health of the data center’s hardware in real time in order to reduce overhead margins and improve efficiency. Using the Intel® DCM single-screen console, the company’s IT administrators quickly gained visibility into the 1,000-server test deployment and