Ever feel like the only constant in the data center industry is that things are always changing? You are not alone.
The data center operations department in one of the world’s largest healthcare enterprises found that they were noticing more and more requests for high-density IT platforms that deviated significantly from their facilities’ standard physical operating specifications around space, power, cooling, airflow, and weight.
Specifically, desired cabinet-scale IT units broke the norms in terms of air and power consumption, as well as weight and size, and concerns arose around optimal cooling set-up for such high-spec equipment.
The healthcare enterprise used the 6Sigma Digital Twin to create digital replicas of its data centers for ongoing use in day-to-day operations, so they could virtually plan effective cooling of the new units whilst avoiding any knock-on cooling issues that might affect existing IT.
With multiple data center sites comprised of hundreds of thousands of square feet, optimizing operations across all sites was a challenge; however, the 6Sigma Digital Twin empowered the healthcare enterprise to provide its business with faster delivery timeframes of upgraded IT services and offer cost savings, whilst still ensuring resilience.
The healthcare enterprise realized the need to invest in tools that could help them gain in-depth knowledge and understanding of the complex physical behavior of the data center cooling system and the interdependencies between other capacity resources such as space, power, and airflow.
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and DCIM products were evaluated, and there was a quick realization that effective system integration would be key. The healthcare enterprise found that physics-based simulation made it easier to accommodate high-density IT deployment because they could perform analysis on large deployments to optimize placement, plan more effectively for out-of-spec power requests, and simulate failure analysis.
They decided to invest in the 6Sigma Digital Twin specifically because it could be smoothly integrated into the systems they already had in place. This smooth integration ensured they could process IT requests quickly enough to avoid damage to the business and they were able to avoid IT service migration to the cloud or other hosted services.
Implementing the 6Sigma Digital Twin and integrating it with current operational systems has enabled this large healthcare provider to streamline data center processes and provide a cost-effective solution by maximizing the performance of their legacy system.
They regularly make decisions on complex issues by running CFD simulations within their digital twin models on a weekly and monthly basis. The operations team actively models power failure analysis on newly installed IT and performs cooling analysis on large IT deployments to optimize placement.
They use the 6Sigma Digital Twin to implement data analysis to understand their data center progression. In placing larger deployments in more optimized locations, they can extend the life of their data centers and keep operations in house. The 6Sigma Digital Twin is deeply beneficial to their business and a major part of their day-to-day operational business processes.
Blog written by: Danielle Gibson, Product Marketing Manager
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