Schneider Electric presents a simple dashboard for its DCIM solutions. This allows companies to examine and report on PUE and other parameters at the click of a button.

Schneider Electric is expanding its EcoStruxure IT data center Infrastructure Management Tooling (DCIM) with a new user-friendly sustainability component. This allows IT administrators to view and monitor important sustainability parameters such as PUE per server room at the touch of a button. Schneider says that collecting such data has traditionally been a labor-intensive task, but thanks to data analysis based on models and algorithms, a useful overview can now be obtained in just a few seconds.

The introduction of the new functions in the EcpStruxure solutions is part of the DCIM 3.0 vision that Schneider presented a year and a half ago. The company wants to support sustainability goals. Specifically, the company is guided by the European Energy Efficiency Directive (EED), which requires very specific reporting from parties with large IT footprints.

Important data, immediately visible

Schneider Electric shows exactly what the new capacity entails. All administrators need to do is specify which room specific devices are located in their DCIM software. You can then immediately view parameters such as the PUE (Effectiveness of power consumption usage), DCiE (Data center infrastructure efficiency), consult the total energy consumption and the energy consumption for cooling. Schneider keeps track of numbers per month and displays charts that allow administrators to quickly compare months across years.

What used to require constant work with a lot of specialist knowledge can now be done very quickly and precisely. If the furnishings of a room change, simply indicate this and the numbers will be adjusted automatically. Schneider performs all the necessary calculations based on the extensive telemetry data from its devices as well as an underlying model built from years of collected data. This model makes some assumptions that are very accurate in theory, but can still be adjusted in practice if a user with the necessary expertise so desires.

Magical reporting

“The solution almost feels like magic,” says Bjarke Fenger, Head of Product Management DCIM. The simplicity will soon come in handy as Europe needs to mandate reporting of DCIM parameters under EED. Administrators can therefore export the data from the EcoStruxure environment into a PDF, but also into CSV files. Getting started with the data in other tools is also an option.

“We worked hard to develop this solution,” said Kevin Brown, SVP ExoStructure IT. Our report does not cover all the parameters required for EED reporting, but it covers about eighty percent.” He further points out that the tool takes into account all relevant IT components, from the large data center to the smallest server rack Edge.

Availability

Schneider will roll out sustainability reporting to EcoStruxure IT Expert before the end of the first quarter. The functionality is included in the subscription to this cloud solution. In the second quarter, the solution will come to EcoStruxure IT Advisor, which offers a more advanced digital twin solution. Finally, ExoStruxure IT Data Center Expert customers can begin model-driven sustainability monitoring in the third quarter of this year.