As part of our on-going efforts to keep customers fully informed on the latest innovations at Modius, we have initiated this customer blog. In the future, I will regularly send out updates on new product innovations and examples of how customers are using Modius OpenData (our flagship product) in the field.
Recently, we updated the data capture capabilities at Sybase in order to provide them with more granular Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) reports. Greg Bush, the Data Center Manager at Sybase, is one of the industry’s leading advocates of comprehensive efficiency reporting.
The PUE reporting and Computed Points capability is contained in our recent release V2.6.
PUE reports are presented in three formats:
- Instantaneous PUE – Snapshot of PUE value with subsystem power usage (kW)
- PUE Trend – Power Usage Effectiveness trended over time (kW)
- PUE Energy – PUE trended in terms of energy consumed (kWh)
For the Sybase installation, we first instrumented for overall data center consumption. We installed a Dent PowerScout 18 power meter on the two automatic transfer switches (ATS) feeding the Sybase data center. This meter collects current (Amps) from the three phases plus neutral on each switch. ooking up the voltage leads requires the power to be shut down, so we didn’t connect them at this time.
In the future, we will connect the voltage leads during a scheduled shutdown. In the meantime, we are using computed points to estimate the real power using nominal voltage and power factor values. The Computed Points capability in DCiM provides extended mathematic or Boolean calculations to the Native Points captured from devices.
More hints and successes with this new capability will be offered in future blog posts.
We also added a meter on the ATS that feeds the dedicated chiller for the data center. (A short system shut-down was possible in this case, so we connected the voltages and are measuring real power directly.)
With the combination of these two meters, we can now monitor the total power used by the data center. The next step was to breakdown consumption.
The IT load is already metered through 12 PDUs and 8 power meters that have been part of the Modius’ monitoring system for years. astly, we created computed points to estimate the power loss across the UPSs based on input current, voltage and output real power.
Please note that in this case Greg Bush has achieved a PUE of 1.41. This low PUE is a testament to all the skill and hard work that Greg has put into optimizing his facility.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.
Kind regards,
Jay H. Hartley, PhD
Director of Professional Services
Jay.Hartley@Modius.com