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APC by Schneider Electric Announces the Newest Evolution of Data Center InfraStruxure™ Management Software
Posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010
New Version of InfraStruxureEnables Virtualization and Reduces Enterprise Carbon Footprints through Holistic Monitoring and Automated Response to DataCenter Physical Infrastructure Events  
 
West Kingston, RI, September 29, 2010APC by Schneider Electric, a global leader in integrated critical power and cooling services, today announced a new version of InfraStruxure™ management software, a core feature of APC’s InfraStruxure architecture which provides an open, vendor neutral management platform for data center physical infrastructure. 
 
New features help companies conserve energy and cut costs by delivering active, open, management across all key domains of the data center, including power, cooling, rack systems, and security systems.  Utilization of InfraStruxure management software has become imperative for IT managers in order to avoid unplanned downtime and to maximize energy efficiency.   With full integration capabilities with enterprise and building management systems, the software provides a core platform to monitor and manage data center assets. 
 
“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 Enterprise Software, APC by Schneider Electric. “By using APC’s 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.”
 
The new features of APC’s InfraStruxure management software portfolio enable IT managers to change the way they monitor, operate, manage and maintain their data centers through the integration of new virtualization capabiltiies and upgraded energy efficiency and operations software. The enhanced capabilities include:
 
  • The new Data Center Lab application within InfraStruxure Capacity, a data center project management tool, enables the design of new data center build-outs or data center upgrades. This new functionality allows users to simulate changes and scenario planning without impacting data center operations. Data Center Lab’s drag and drop functionality and instant feedback on the impact of adding new IT gear makes the tool ideal for the creation of blueprint design proposals including floor layouts, rack layouts and inventory lists for data center expansion, consolidation or new build projects.
  • InfraStruxure Capacity’s updated Impact Analysis application provides an instant overview of data center physical infrastructure operations including UPS, power distribution and cooling independent of the types and brands of equipment present in the data center. This application is uniquely 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. Vendor-agnostic inventory management and real-time device failure notifications are shown within physical data center 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 critical issues including the migration of virtual machines.
  • Through InfraStuxure Efficiency 1.1, IT managers can quickly and easily report on monthly energy consumption of their data center subsystems including CO2 emissions, PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) and DCIE (Data Center 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, providing a more accurate representation of emissions and energy costs.
  • The new network management tool within InfraStruxure Capacity provides insight into equipment dependencies including mapping and documenting fiber and copper networks from servers, via patch panels, to switches or routers allowing IT managers to document connectivity, manage their network structure and plan and control network usage.
 
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. This 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 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.  
 
With these new features, InfraStruxure management software enables IT managers to align capacity with demand at row, rack, and server levels; monitor the data center physical infrastructure with instant status notifications and alarms; and reduce non-IT power consumption and wasteful excess capacity in order to increase overall data center efficiency.  
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