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Schneider Electric Consolidates U.S. Data Centers; Integrates Subsystems with Management Software

Posted on Thursday, October 21, 2010

St LouisSchneiderElectricTechnologyCenter Showcases EcoStruxure™ Solution for Intelligent Energy Management

Orlando, FL October 21, 2010 — Schneider Electric, a global specialist in energy management, today unveiled a newly integrated data center located at the Schneider Electric Technology Center outside of St. Louis. The facility consolidates two of the company’s U.S. data centers and takes advantage of Schneider Electric’s expertise in five key industries – power, data centers, process and machines, building control, and physical security – leveraging the company’s EcoStruxure™ solution architecture to enable intelligent energy management. The integration of building, power, and data center physical infrastructure is showcased at the facility and is the foundation of EcoStruxure.

“Schneider Electric provides an open and flexible ecosystem of technology that helps the CIO, data center manager and facility operator uncover energy savings while ensuring the highest levels of availability. Through efficient design, monitoring and lower cost per kilowatt hour we have documented significant electricity cost savings over a twelve month period at the Schneider Electric Technology Center,” said Jim Simonelli, CTO, IT Business, Schneider Electric. “Data center managers are under a lot of pressure to deliver more results with fewer resources, so it is of the utmost importance to provide them with the tools they need to quickly and easily deploy infrastructure that will streamline processes and help their company operate more efficiently.”

At the heart of the Schneider Electric data center is an integrated energy management solution that monitors all of the interdependent systems. Real time power usage effectiveness (PUE) reporting gives an accurate view of utilization so data center managers can know if power going into the data center is being used effectively and not wasted. Also, data center availability is optimized by monitoring all data center physical infrastructure elements in the IT, electrical and mechanical rooms. This detailed reporting on energy cost breakdown by subsystem helps to target energy use for maximum operating expense reduction and increased uptime.

High-level dashboards allow data center managers to easily monitor the efficiency, availability, performance, safety and security of the entire facility. This visibility opens new opportunities for monitoring and managing complete building-level solutions. Schneider Electric’s capabilities in energy management across multiple systems helped make this visibility possible in the consolidated data center, which incorporates many of Schneider Electric’s software platforms including:

At the Facility level:

· Schneider Electric TAC Vista™ – monitors and automates the fully integrated environmental control system for the core building (Offices, Labs, Hospitality space, etc.) including the thermal energy plant, general access control, and surveillance.

· Schneider Electric TAC Continuum™ – specialized monitoring of the data center chilled water sub-system (Cooling towers, chillers, pumps, and computer room and rack air handlers), and manages secure access control through the use of card readers, biometric hand scanners and Schneider Electric Pelco security cameras.

· Schneider Electric PowerLogic™ ION Enterprise – monitors the facility and data center electrical infrastructure from the Utility feed to Power Distribution Units in the data center. Core functions of this system include the ability to profile energy consumption and trends, characterize power quality events, and visually drill down from the overall view of the electrical network to the equipment level.

In the IT Room:

· APC by Schneider Electric InfraStruxure™ Central - monitors, reports, analyzes and trends on the status and health of the power, cooling, security and environmental conditions on the IT Room floor.

· APC by Schneider Electric InfraStruxure™ Operations - enables a workflow for change and capacity planning and simulation, energy efficiency reporting, analytics and trending, and energy cost allocation for the IT environment

“A data center is an interdependent system comprised of multiple subsystems, so it requires management that touches all areas and provides greater visibility, from rack to row to room to building,” says Kevin Brown, vice president, data center global offer, IT Business. “By reducing inefficiencies and increasing our ability to make energy waste visible, the data center at the Schneider Electric Technology Center demonstrates the integrated, consolidated data center that many companies are seeking to build today.”

The Schneider Electric Technology Center is one of the world’s most advanced facilities devoted to data center power, cooling and energy management research and development. With more than 100,000 square feet, the facility includes live data center demonstration rooms, environmental test chambers, a training facility, R&D testing facilities and is home to the Schneider Electric in-house state-of-the-art data center. The Schneider Electric Technology Center is the premier APC global Experience Center dedicated to working with clients and engineering par