Arch Rock Energy Optimizer in Action: Data Centers

Sponsored by Arch Rock Corporation

Dense blade computing, server and storage virtualization, “cloud” computing and other recent trends in information technology have raised the priority for energy and thermal efficiency in data center design. 24-hour-a-day data center energy consumption was estimated [EPA] to be 1.5 percent of total U.S. electricity consumption in 2006 - and could potentially double by 2011. The key to improving data center operations, reducing energy consumption, and reaping associated costs savings is an open monitoring, reporting and alerting framework that helps facility and IT managers improve environmental efficiency.

ATEN Fundamentals of Enterprise

Sponsored by ATEN

ATEN's newest whitepaper is a guide to enterprise KVM products. The whitepaper will give you a better understanding of the benefits and advantages of KVM technology. Read about common KVM solutions for the commercial and government facilities

CFD for Mechanical Design Engineers -

Sponsored by Mentor Graphics

This paper provides CIMdata

Compliant Solutions: Best Practices for Secure IT Infrastructure Management

Sponsored by Citirx/Carpathia

This document contains an excerpt from Carpathia Hosting's Best Practices for Secure IT Infrastructure Management, the purpose of which is to help demonstrate the depth of Carpathia Hosting's understanding of and applied knowledge regarding the deployment and maintenance of secured, reliable IT Infrastructure that meets or exceed Federal IT regulations. The excerpted sections in this document are: Deployment Best Practices Sustainment Best Practices

Connectivity in the Virtualized Datacenter: How to Ensure Next-Generation Services

Sponsored by Fluke Networks

Virtualization is changing the economics of the datacenter by making computing resources more flexible and efficient. To capitalize on these benefits, most datacenters must make fundamental changes to their Top-of-Rack or End-of-Row network architectures. A virtualization strategy is more likely to succeed if the performance of the datacenter network can be assured before services are enabled and if the cable plant foundation is certified to meet the needs of today and tomorrow. This whitepaper written by Broadcom Corporation and Fluke Networks compares the new choices for datacenter connectivity and describes test methods that help to ensure that your network provides a solid base for deploying virtualized services.

Data Center Assessments: The First Step to Optimization

Sponsored by HP

Data centers are large, important investments that, when properly designed, built, and operated, are an integral part of the business strategy driving the success of any enterprise. Yet the central focus of organizations is often the acquisition and deployment of the IT architecture equipment and systems with little thought given to the structure and space in which it is to be housed, serviced, and maintained. This invariably leads to facility infrastructure problems such as thermal “hot spots”, lack of UPS (uninterruptible power supply) rack power, lack of redundancy, system overloading and other issues that threaten or prevent the realization of the return on the investment in the IT systems. This White Paper provides guidelines for (re)designing a data center to achieve the efficiencies which management is looking for over the long term.

Emerging UPS Standby Power Sources

Sponsored by Eaton

Though an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) performs many important functions, most users value them chiefly for the emergency energy they provide during a power outage. UPSs give IT personnel the time they need to protect sensitive equipment and data from the effects of an electrical service interruption by shutting down systems in an orderly fashion or starting a backup generator. Today, most UPS products use lead acid batteries to store emergency standby power. A proven technology with many decades of successful service in a variety of industrial settings, the lead acid battery remains the most cost-effective energy storage solution as measured by dollars per minute of backup time. Yet despite these merits, lead acid batteries are unpopular among data center managers due to their size, weight, maintenance requirements, toxic contents and relatively short lifespan, among other issues. As a result, UPS makers have long been searching for an alternative standby power technology that’s smaller, simpler and “greener” than lead acid batteries, yet no more expensive to operate. Today, that hunt just may be nearing its end. Several exciting new standby power solutions, all rapidly approaching mainstream commercial viability, appear poised to give the lead acid battery a run for its money. This white paper will explore the strengths, weaknesses and future prospects of four such technologies: Flywheels, ultracapacitors, fuel cells and lithium ion batteries.

Forrester Research- Five Data Center Efficiency Moves To Make Today

Sponsored by HP

This white paper by Forrester is based on a survey with 185 IT professionals in the Spring of 2009. Forrester found that these companies all suffered from inefficiency across many aspects of IT including: hardware utilization, IT process, and data center power consumption. At the time of the survey, all respondents were pursuing data center optimization projects. Based on these optimization projects, Forrester recommends five key ways that firms can improve their IT efficiency.

Four Steps to Achieving Energy Savings in the Data Center

Sponsored by Arch Rock Corporation

According to industry surveys, best‐in‐class data centers achieve an average Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 1.2. This is a 40 percent improvement over the industry average of 2.03 reported by respondents to a recent survey. Other industry surveys indicate yet higher average PUEs across the board. How do best‐in‐class data centers achieve such an optimum PUE? A strategy of “Measure and Manage” can have a huge impact. This Arch Rock Application Note describes four steps to gaining visibility into data center energy usage and realizing substantial savings using Arch Rock's Energy Optimizer wireless energy monitoring system.

HP- A Blueprint for Reducing Energy Costs in your Data Center

Sponsored by HP

This white paper gives you a blueprint for reducing data center energy costs. First, you need to determine how much energy is being consumed in each corner of your data center. You next need to identify where you can make the most effective efficiency improvements, and determine the cost and ROI horizon of those improvements. Finally, by comparing the investment requirements to potential payback, you can put together a convincing business justification for the CIO and CFO. For success you really need three elements- know the savings, know the costs, and have a plan.