New Industry Products

Emerson Network Power Introduces SmartDesign Approach to Optimize Data Center Infrastructure

February 07, 2012 by Jeff Shepard

Emerson Network Power introduced the SmartDesign™ infrastructure, an intelligent, integrated design approach that leverages industry best practices for improving data center infrastructure performance throughout the lifecycle of the data center.

The SmartDesign approach simplifies the complex environment of data centers by bringing together the most comprehensive power, precision cooling, monitoring and infrastructure management technologies. It also extends the Emerson Smart Solutions benefits into data centers requiring room-scale power and cooling configurations. Each data center configuration utilizes intelligent, integrated infrastructure systems that are efficient, economical, simplified and controllable – not only today, but in an ever-changing IT future as well.

In addition, every SmartDesign recommendation leverages several or all of the following best practices:

1. Maximize the return air temperature at the cooling units to improve capacity and efficiency

2. Match cooling capacity with IT loads

3. Utilize cooling designs that reduce energy consumption

4. Select the power system that optimizes your availability and efficiency

5. Design for flexibility using scalable architecture that minimizes footprint

6. Enable performance-enhancing data center infrastructure management, monitoring and control

7. Leverage local data center design expertise and technical assistance

To demonstrate the effectiveness of these approaches, the company has developed a number of reference designs to show examples of multiple infrastructure technologies configured in various arrangements. In addition to specifying equipment, each reference design includes operating expenditure (OPex), total cost of ownership (TCO) and power usage effectiveness (PUE) metrics along with the corresponding technology configuration. Users obtain directional comparisons with other SmartDesign scenarios in the areas of efficiency, availability, capacity and scalability. The initial reference designs cover 180 kW to 1,300 kW.

"Data centers need a level of design that addresses their unique requirements for optimizing performance. Concepts that resemble an off-the-shelf approach or others that require elaborate build-out and untested integration efforts may not contain the best practices needed to optimize efficiency, availability and capacity," said Jeff Sturgeon, vice president/GM global solutions, Emerson Network Power. "Our goal with the SmartDesign approach is to give data center professionals and consulting engineers proven insight to more effectively and efficiently use the technologies and best practices available today to design the right data center for today and tomorrow. The beauty of this approach is that it encompasses the full range of power, cooling, racks and infrastructure management technologies available today, but it ensures a level of preparedness for future IT needs that is unmatched in today’s data center industry."

SmartDesign approaches combine the value of local expertise with the deep technology portfolio of Emerson Network Power. Depending on configuration, a SmartDesign infrastructure can reduce cooling system energy consumption and costs, increase available capacities, manage high heat loads that can limit computing flexibility, maximize space utilization by supporting higher equipment densities, and help ensure availability of high-density equipment.

Go Daddy, the world’s largest provider of Web hosting, domain name registrations and net new SSL Certificates, operates world-class data centers in Asia, Europe and the United States. The tech giant adopted a SmartDesign-type infrastructure approach for recent projects. "We are always looking for ways to make our services more efficient for our customers and the SmartDesign approach helps us get the job done," said Go Daddy Critical Facilities Manager Rene LeBlanc.

The SmartDesign infrastructure is supported by local data center experts and the industry’s largest service organization working in tandem with industry planners, engineers and contractors to properly apply best practices and leading technologies so that data centers can achieve the performance, total cost of ownership, uptime and efficiency levels demanded.

More news and information regarding the latest developments in Smart Grid electronics can be found at Darnell’s SmartGridElectronics.Net.