With Data Centers, What Can Happen Will Happen (Eventually).

Because data centers and telecom switching centers are designed to withstand failures without interrupting business operations, a 3 a.m. emergency due to a malfunctioning air conditioner should never occur – in theory. But Murphy’s Law says that if a single failure can create an emergency, it will. So, to date, operators have had to react to single-component failures as if they are business-critical. Because they might be.

In my previous blog, I pointed out the two components of risk: the probability of and the consequence of failure. While both of these components are important in failure analysis, it is the consequence of failure that’s most effective at helping decision-makers manage the cost of failure.

If you know there is a high probability of impending failure, but you don’t know the potential consequence, you have to act as though every threat has the potential for an expensive business interruption. Taking such actions is typically expensive. But if you know the consequence, even without knowing the probability of failure, you can react to inconsequential failures at your leisure and plan so that consequential failures are less likely.

In the past, the consequences of a failure weren’t knowable or predictable. The combination of Internet of Things (IoT) data and machine learning has changed all that. It’s now possible to predict the consequence of failure by analyzing large quantities of historical sensor data. These predictions can be performed on demand and without the need for geometrical data hall descriptions.

The advantage of machine learning-based systems is that predictive models are continually tuned to actual operating conditions. Even as things change and scale over time, the model remains accurate without manual intervention. The consequences of actions, in addition to equipment failures, become knowable and predictable.

This type of consequence analysis is particularly important for organizations that have a run-to-failure policy for mechanical equipment. Run-to-failure is common in organizations with severe capital constraints, but it only works, and avoids business interruptions, if the consequence of the next failure is predictable.

Predicting the consequence of failure allows an operations team to avoid over-reacting to failures that do not affect business continuity. Rather than dispatching a technician in the middle of the night, an operations team can address a predicted failure with minimal or no consequence during its next scheduled maintenance. If consequence analysis indicates that a cooling unit failure may put more significant assets at risk, the ability to predict how much time is available before a critical temperature is reached provides time for graceful shutdown – and mitigation.

Preventative maintenance carries risk, but equipment still needs to be shut off at times for maintenance. Will it cause a problem? Predictive consequence analysis can provide the answer. If there’s an issue with shutting off a particular unit, you can know in advance and provide spot cooling to mitigate the risks.

 The ability to predict the consequences of failure, or intentional action such as preventative maintenance, gives facility managers greater control over the reliability of their facilities, and the peace of mind that their operations are as safe as possible.

The Real Cost of Cooling Configuration Errors

Hands in the network cause problems. A setting adjusted once, based on someone’s instinct of what needed to be changed at one moment in time, is often unmodified years later.

This is configuration rot. If your data center has been running for a while, the chances are pretty high that your cooling configurations, to name one example, are wildly out of sync. It’s even more likely you don’t know about it.

Every air conditioner is controlled by an embedded computer. Each computer supports multiple configuration parameters. Each of these different configurations can be perfectly acceptable. But a roomful of air conditioners with individually sensible configurations can produce bad outcomes when their collective impact is considered.

I recently toured a new data center in which each air conditioner supported 17 configuration parameters affecting temperature and humidity. There was a lot of unexplainable variation in the configurations. Six of the 17 configuration settings varied by more than 30%, unit to unit. Only five configurations were the same. Configuration variation initially and entropy over time wastes energy and prevents the overall air conditioning system from producing an acceptable temperature and humidity distribution.

Configuration errors contribute to accidental de-rating and loss of capacity. This wastes energy, and it’s costly from a capex perceptive. Perhaps you don’t need a new air conditioner. Instead, perhaps you can optimize or synchronize the configurations for the air conditioners you already have and unlock the capacity you need. Another common misconfiguration error is incompatible set points. If one air conditioner is trying to make a room cold and another is trying to make it warmer, the units will fight.

Configuration errors also contribute to poor free cooling performance. Misconfiguration can lock out free cooling in many ways.

The problem is significant. Large organizations use thousands of air conditioners. Manual management of individual configurations is impossible. Do the math. If you have 2000 air conditioners, each of which has up to 17 configuration parameters, you have 34,000 configuration possibilities, not to mention the additional external variables. How can you manage, much less optimize configurations over time?

Ideally, you need intelligent software that manages these configurations automatically. You need templates that prescribe optimized configuration. You need visibility to determine, on a regular basis, which configurations are necessary as conditions change. You need exception handling, so you can temporarily change configurations when you perform tasks such as maintenance, equipment swaps, and new customer additions, and then make sure the configurations return to their optimized state afterward. And, you need a system that will alert you when someone tries to change a configuration, and/or enforce optimized configurations automatically.

This concept isn’t new. It’s just rarely done. But if you aren’t aggressively managing configurations, you are losing money.

A Look at 2014

In 2014 we leveraged the significant company, market and customer expansion we achieved in 2013 to focus on strategic partnerships.  Our goal was to significantly increase our global footprint with the considerable resources and vision of these industry leaders.  We have achieved that goal and more.

Together with our long-standing partner NTT Facilities, we continue to add power and agility to complementary data center product lines managed by NTT in pan-Asia deployments.  In partnership with Schneider Electric, we are proud to announce the integration of Vigilent dynamic cooling management technology into the Cooling Optimize module of Schneider Electric’s industry-leading DCIM suite, StruxureWare for Data Centers.

Beyond the technical StruxureWare integration, Vigilent has also worked closely with Schneider Electric to train hundreds of Schneider Electric sales and field operations professionals in preparation for the worldwide roll-out of Cooling Optimize.  Schneider Electric’s faith in us has already proven well-founded as deployments are already underway across multiple continents.  With the reach of Schneider Electric’s global sales and marketing operations, their self-described “Big Green Machine,” and NTT Facilities’ expanding traction in and outside of Japan, we anticipate a banner year.

As an early adopter of machine learning, Vigilent has been recognized as a pioneer of the Internet of Things (IoT) for energy.  Data collected over seven years from hundreds of deployments continually informs and improves Vigilent system performance.  The analytics we have developed provide unprecedented visibility into data center operations and are driving the introduction of new Vigilent capabilities.

Business success aside, our positive impact on the world continues to grow.  In late 2014, we announced that Vigilent systems have reduced energy consumption by more than half a billion kilowatt hours and eliminated more than 351,000 tons of CO2 emissions.  These figures are persistent and grow with each new deployment.

We are proud to see our customers turn pilot projects into multiple deployments as the energy savings and data center operational benefits of the system prove themselves over and over again.  This organic growth is testimony to the consistency of the Vigilent product’s operation in widely varying mission critical environments.

Stay tuned to watch this process repeat itself as we add new Fortune 50 logos to our customer base in 2015.  We applaud the growing sophistication of the data center industry as it struggles with the dual challenges of explosive growth and environmental stewardship and remain thankful for our part in that process.

 

2011 Reflections

There is a saying in the MEP consulting business: “no one ever gets sued for oversizing.” That fear-driven mentality also affects the operation of mechanical systems in data centers, which accounts for why data centers are over-cooled at great expense.  But few facility managers know by how much.  The fact is that it has been easier – and to date –safer to over-cool a data center as the importance of the data it contains has increased and with that importance, the pressure to protect it.

Last year that changed.  With new technology, facility managers know exactly how much cooling is required in a data center, at any given time. And, perhaps more importantly, technology can provide warning – and reaction time – in the rare instances when temperatures increase unexpectedly. With this technology, data center cooling can now be “dynamically right-sized.”  The risk of dynamic management can be made lower than manual operation, which is prone to human error.

In our own nod to the advantages of this technology, we re-named the company I co-founded in 2004, from Federspiel Corporation to Vigilent Corporation.  As our technology increased in sophistication, we felt that our new name, denoting vigilance and intelligent oversight of facility heating and cooling operations, was more reflective of the new reality in data center cooling management.   Last year, through smart, automated management of data center energy consumption, Vigilent reduced carbon emissions and energy consumption of cooling systems by 30-40%.  These savings will continue year after year, benefiting not only those companies’ bottom line, but also their corporate sustainability objectives.   These savings have been accomplished while maintaining the integrity and desired temperatures of data centers of all sizes and configurations in North America, Canada and Japan.

I’m proud of what we have achieved last year.  And I’m proud of those companies who have stepped up to embrace technology that can replace fear with certainty, and waste with efficiency.