APC by Schneider Electric, a global leader in integrated critical power and cooling services, has announced the debut of APC TradeOff ToolsÔäó, new Web-based applications with easy-to-use interfaces designed for use in the early stages of datacenter concept and design development. By enabling datacenter professionals to experiment with various scenarios regarding virtualization, efficiency, power sizing, capital costs, and other key design issues, APC TradeOff Tools break down major datacenter planning decisions into a series of smaller, more manageable decisions. Use of these tools helps validate, through modelling, the overall design of a datacenter.
"Customers need to make many key decisions during any datacenter project, and they do not always have the necessary information to guide them, said Carl Cottuli, vice president of APC's Datacenter Science Center. "Many of their concerns are not addressed by configuration tools because they occur early in the concept selection process. With the introduction of APC's TradeOff Tools, when a roadblock arises, the datacenter decision maker can easily find a tool to deal with their specific issue, get a quick answer, and continue on in the concept selection process.
The seven tools are currently available on the http://tools.apc.com section of the APC Web site. They include:
Carbon Calculator :Illustrates how changes to a datacenter's location, efficiency, and power load can impact carbon dioxide emissions and the electric bill. This provides management with a general indication of how "green their datacenter is today and how "green it could be. Energy Efficiency Calculator: Profiles a datacenter and calculates the resulting efficiency and electrical cost based on datacenter characteristics. Users can then understand the impact each key datacenter decision has on the datacenter's efficiency.
Capital Cost Calculator: Identifies key datacenter physical infrastructure parameters and calculates capital costs based on those parameters. This allows datacenter users to judge how changes to datacenter location, IT load, and cooling and power infrastructure can impact overall capital costs.
Virtualization Energy Cost Calculator: Comprehends IT and physical infrastructure characteristics and calculates energy savings resulting from the virtualization of servers. This allows the user to test the impact of virtualization and various physical infrastructure improvements on their datacenter floor space and on their energy consumption.
Power Sizing Calculator: Defines basic characteristics of the IT load and calculates how much utility input power would be required to support such a load. This provides users with a general idea of how much power in kilowatts they will need to run their datacenter. InRowÔäó Containment Selector: Generates a prototype rack and row cooling configuration based on the user's preferences and the physical constraints of the room. This provides the user with their optimal InRow cooling containment configuration.
AC vs. DC Calculator: Compares four different AC and DC power distribution architectures and calculates their respective efficiencies. This allows the user to make an educated decision on the optimal architecture for their datacenter.
APC's Datacenter Science Center (DCSC) designed the APC TradeOff Tools. The DCSC team of engineers and analysts researches datacenter issues and helps develop design and learning tools that assist datacenter professionals in managing their datacenters.