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APC by Schneider Electric, a specialist in integrated critical power and cooling services, announced an updated version of its InfraStruxure management software, a core feature of its InfraStruxure architecture that provides an open, vendor-neutral management platform for data center physical infrastructure. The new features are designed to help companies conserve energy and cut costs by delivering management across all domains of the data center, including power, cooling, rack systems and security systems.
Key components of APC’s InfraStruxure management software portfolio upgrade include the Data Center Lab application within InfraStruxure Capacity, a data center project management tool that enables the design of new data center build-outs or data center upgrades. This new functionality is designed to allow users to simulate changes and scenario planning without impacting data center operations. Data Center Lab also offers drag-and-drop functionality and instant feedback on the impact of adding new IT gear.
InfraStruxure Capacity’s updated Impact Analysis application provides an overview of data center physical infrastructure operations including UPS, power distribution and cooling. This application is able to alert an IT manager when a temperature or other physical infrastructure-related event has occurred that could potentially impact the individual IT equipment.
A new network management tool within InfraStruxure Capacity offers monitoring of equipment dependencies including mapping and documenting fiber and copper networks from servers, via patch panels, to switches or routers, designed to help IT managers document connectivity, manage network structure, and plan and control network usage.
In addition, vendor-agnostic inventory management and real-time device failure notifications are shown within physical data centre layouts. These capabilities, available within InfraStruxure Operations 6.1 Capacity Manager, allow for the setting of thresholds, management of efficiencies, custom reporting and automated recommendations on how to resolve issues including the migration of virtual machines.
Green features include InfraStruxure Efficiency 1.1, which lets IT managers report on monthly energy consumption of their data center subsystems, including CO2 emissions, PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) and DCIE (Data Centre Infrastructure Efficiency). Carbon footprint and energy costs are user configurable or can be automatically calculated to correlate with local power generation CO2 emission and local public utility data.
An example of the increased integration capabilities of the software includes the real-time communication between InfraStruxure Operations 6.1 with Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 via a Pro Pack. The new capability automatically migrates virtual machines to healthy, secure host server environments and provides visibility into how virtual machines relate to physical servers. Additionally, InfraStruxure Operations ensures that Virtual Machine Manager is aware of critical physical infrastructure alarms and events, including power, cooling, security and environment, and can execute corrective actions to move virtual machines to non-impacted areas within the data center.
“More than ever, businesses are looking to maximize energy efficiency and minimize the complexity of their data center operations. We updated our InfraStruxure management software to provide not only critical monitoring and measurement but extensive operational upgrades to enable seamless implementation of virtualization and the reduction of overall carbon footprints,” said Soeren Brogaard Jensen, vice president of enterprise software for APC by Schneider Electric. “By using InfraStruxure Management Suite, IT managers can finally implement virtualization without worrying about whether their physical infrastructure can support the nomadic loads. These upgrades allow customers to maximize current resources, conserve energy and better plan for the future.”