Billion dollar drain: The true cost of lost capacity in the data centre

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1 Billion dollar drain: The true cost of lost capacity in the data centre

2 Executive summary headache The global data centre industry is booming, with triple-digit investment growth in South East Asia and double-digit growth in mature Western European markets. However, a substantial proportion of this investment (up to 50% in the worst cases) is being spent on compute capacity that will never be utilised. This highly expensive wastage occurs when day-to-day data centre operations (such as IT devices being installed, decommissioned and moved) are carried out without regard to the long-term effects on compute capacity. The only way to prevent lost capacity is through the use of simulation and modelling techniques that enable the four key capacities of data centre infrastructure space, power, cooling and cabling to be proactively and collaboratively managed throughout the life of the facility. Future Facilities 6SigmaDC software suite brings computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to the world of data centre management. It is the only software currently available in the market that offers CFD-powered air flow modelling so that operators can see the air as it moves through a 100% accurate virtual representation of their computer room. Deployment of the Virtual Facility at the outset of a data centre project is highly effective in maximising total capacity utilisation; we have also worked with clients who have clawed back anything up to 40% of their data centre s lost capacity through smarter deployment of existing IT infrastructure. futurefacilities.com 1

3 The data centre your mission critical headache It s hard to overstate the importance of data centres to the global economy. The financial markets depend on them, e-commerce depends on them; indeed any organisation that uses electronic communications, such as , depends on them. And the larger an organisation grows, the more important that reliable data storage, analysis and communication of information becomes. IT systems have become a key source of competitive advantage for many businesses and the data centre a critical facility in the delivery of these services. So it s no surprise that the global data centre sector is positively booming. Whole industries have sprung up around the data centre, from multinational cloud computing vendors such as Amazon Web Services through to colocation service providers giving customers access to physical infrastructure, power and cooling capacity leased from third party vendors. According to DatacenterDynamics 2012 Industry Census, investment levels are increasing across the world quite dramatically in some cases. The Census predicts a further $15bn will be invested in the coming 12 months, taking the global total investment in data centres to $120bn. This is anticipated to translate into an additional 5 million square feet of new data centre space across the globe The medium-term prognosis follows a similar pattern, with analysts Gartner predicting that global hardware spending (including servers, storage and networking equipment) in data centres will reach $106.4 billion in 2012 and exceed $126.2 billion in But are data centre operators getting full value from these extraordinary levels of investment? The simple answer is no in fact organisations are wasting billions every year as their data centres fail to reach the capacity they were designed for. Put simply data centre capacity is the amount of processing, data storage and communication that the data centre is designed to achieve. At a physical level this translates into servers, storage devices and networking devices, all of which require infrastructural support in terms of space, power, cooling and cabling: Figure 1 - Data Centre Capacity: Physical Infrastructure supports IT Devices that provide compute capacity. futurefacilities.com 2

4 These infrastructure requirements form the basis of every budgeting and return on investment calculation for a new data centre project. However, the reality is that a significant portion of this infrastructure up to 50% in the worst cases remains unused throughout the facility s lifecycle. Why? Before explaining why this happens it s worth highlighting what should happen in an ideal world. This is a gradual deployment of IT devices (servers, storage and networking) within the data centre that eventually uses up all its capacity. Or, to put it another way, you run out of space, power, cooling and cabling at the same time your data centre reaches 100% compute capacity. In reality, the space, power, cooling and cabling are used up at different rates in different parts of the data centre, fragmenting the infrastructure and rendering a proportion of it unusable. This fragmentation is caused predominantly by two k e y variables: IT devices are continually being installed, decommissioned and moved over the lifecycle of the data centre. IT devices are upgraded by their manufacturers, which changes the requirements for space, power, cooling and cabling. This ever-changing environment makes successfully delivering the space, power, cooling and cabling requirements over time a very difficult task. Worse still, IT and Facilities teams are typically trying to manage this complex web of data centre alterations without appropriately sophisticated management tools. As a result, they re often unaware of the capacity implications of what they re doing until it s too late (you can find several practical examples of how this happens in our report The Elephant in the Room is Lost Capacity available to download from the Media center section of our website). Of course, nobody sets out to deliberately waste capacity. But it appears to have become an accepted part of data centre life, with operators seemingly unwilling to question why it s happening, instead seeing only the stark choice between commissioning new capacity or facing unacceptable risks to their business critical operations. To exacerbate the problem, those responsible for signing off data centre budgets often have scant idea of the gap between the capacity they ve paid for and what they actually get; even less what to do to close it. So there s little or no top-down pressure to tackle and rectify the problem. At the root of this financial horror story are some simple but fundamental questions that every data centre budget-holder should be able to answer: How much Data Centre Capacity have I lost? What is the true cost of lost capacity to my business? Do our IT and Facilities teams have the tools to reclaim this lost capacity? How can we prevent lost capacity in the future? If you can t adequately answer those questions then lost capacity is almost certainly occurring right now within your data centre or centres. futurefacilities.com 3

5 Q: How much Data Centre Capacity have I lost? While every data centre represents an individual case, you can get an idea of the scale of this problem by combining research from DatacenterDynamics*, which estimates global compute capacity of 15.5 GW, with our own client surveys that have revealed lost capacity of 30% or more. This indicates that a minimum of 4.65GW of global compute capacity is going unutilised a $70 billion black hole that (based on industry averages) is equivalent to 31 million square feet of wasted floor space which is equivalent to just under fourteen Empire State Buildings However, you cannot produce an accurate answer to the question as it relates to your data centre unless you deploy simulation and modelling techniques specifically designed for such a purpose. We ve already explained how capacity gets lost as the data centre environment develops; it s a process that begins on the first day of operation, even when the aisles are quite empty. Without simulation and modelling the true extent of this capacity loss doesn t begin to become apparent until well into the lifecycle of the data centre, at around 55% of capacity utilisation according to studies. By this point the options for tackling the problem are naturally more limited. At best and even allowing for expensive reconfigurations and additional investment in cooling a data centre managed using the industry s historical practices will reach only 70% of its design compute capacity, while we have seen extreme examples where facilities have struggled to little more than 50% capacity before being exhausted. * Global Data Center Energy Demand Forecasting - DatacenterDynamics, September 2011 Q: What is the true cost of lost capacity to my business? How serious are the financial implications of lost capacity? The following example, covering a 1.3MW data centre over its 15-year lifespan, helps to give an idea of the numbers involved numbers that far outweigh every other cost (including energy provision) associated with the data centre. Figure 2 - Annualised TCO for a single Data Centre based on Used Capacity It uses the tool provided by the Uptime Institute for modelling the true total cost of ownership (True TCO) of a data centre project. Here the initial capital expenditure for our sample data centre amounts to $50m, which the True TCO calculator (see above graph) annualises to $6.3m per year of its 15- year life, based on the static annuity method. Fixed costs, which generally fall outside the influence of the data centre owner, amount to $3.1m a year. futurefacilities.com 4

6 The major variable is load dependent operational expenditure, because it is determined by the amount of load installed in the facility. However, this is also the smallest cost factor by far. Figure 3 - Annualised TCO for a single Data Centre based on Comparative Used Capacities The graph above shows how the costs incurred by a data centre with 50% lost capacity compare with one running at 100%. Even though only 50% of the required processing power is being delivered, the total cost figures are almost identical, due to the minimal impact of savings in load dependent operational expenditure. In other words, it costs no more to run a data centre at 100% utilisation than it does at 50%. To make matters worse, the missing 0.65MW of lost capacity must still be delivered, so either a major engineering intervention must be made or, at worst, a second data centre has to be commissioned, thus doubling the cost per kw of processing that was originally budgeted for. The additional time taken to complete the engineering intervention or new facility build could easily result in delays to the deployment of critical new systems. This in turn could put the organisation at a competitive disadvantage by affecting its ability to introduce new products and services potentially compromising future revenues or opening up the organisation to competitive threats. Such a situation will no doubt resonate with any CFO who has had to sign off on unbudgeted capital expenditure for data centre upgrades or new facilities in order to overcome a short-term capacity crunch. futurefacilities.com 5

7 Q: Do our IT and Facilities teams have the tools to reclaim this lost capacity? There s no doubt that the development of Data Centre Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software has radically improved the ability to monitor facilities in real time, trouble-shoot operational issues and warn of imminent risks such as thermal shutdowns. However, DCIM on its own cannot reclaim lost capacity, because it lacks the ability to accurately predict what is going to happen in the future. Even when DCIM is used to extrapolate a future trend based upon historical data, this information is rendered meaningless the moment a data centre s configuration changes. Tackling lost capacity requires a tool which gives IT and Facilities a platform upon which to work better together; which enables them to model the effects of changes to a data centre before those changes are implemented, and which can help them to avoid the day-to-day operational blunders that waste valuable capacity. The only tool that can do all these things and more is a Virtual Facility. The Virtual Facility a simple to use solution powered by a very complex technology Use of simulation techniques and predictive analysis is standard practice across numerous industries today: every aircraft we fly in, the cars we drive, buildings, oil rigs and indeed the servers installed in data centres all make use of simulation through computational fluid dynamics (CFD). In a nutshell, CFD uses complex algorithms to analyse and solve problems that involve fluid and solid flows. In the airline industry, for example, CFD can determine whether a wing design will fly, so there s no longer the need to build prototype planes and risk the lives of test pilots to find out. CFD simulation saves time and costs and helps model numerous different designs to establish the best option faster. This is particularly important in a high-tech field such as Formula One, where teams model every component of the car before they commit to its manufacture, as well as simulating every race and test session virtually before travelling to a circuit. CFD plays a fundamental role within the design and operation of the Virtual Facility in fact Future Facilities has employed some of the best exponents of CFD in the world to create our 6SigmaDC suite of virtual modelling software. Figure 4-6SigmaDC software snapshot futurefacilities.com 6

8 Thanks to our unique application of CFD, data centre designers and operators using the 6SigmaDC suite can, for the first time, actually see the air as it moves through a 100% accurate virtual representation of their computer room. It s this flow of air that is most important in determining the effectiveness of a data centre s cooling system and, by extension, its ability to reach capacity. Ours is the only software currently available in the market that offers CFD-powered air flow modelling with this level of sophistication. By using it as a platform to work more collaboratively, IT and Facilities finally have all the information they need to plan properly for the full life of the data centre, testing every significant operational decision in a simulated environment before implementing it in the real world facility. Q: How can we prevent lost capacity in the future? Although the Virtual Facility offers most benefits when deployed at the outset of a data centre design and build project, it is also extremely effective at helping to reclaim lost capacity through smarter IT deployment. We have worked with clients that have clawed back anything up to 40% of their data centre s capacity through such exercises potentially delaying the need to invest in a new data centre by months if not years and making a significant difference to the return on investment of their facilities. One of our clients, a UK-based banking group, has implemented the Virtual Facility in one of its existing data centres, demonstrating that improved capacity utilisation can also be augmented by additional savings in areas such as energy use. In this case, through various actions planned and implemented with the help of the Virtual Facility our client has saved around 100,000 a year in cooling costs, providing a payback on its investment in our software in just two years. More important, it has reclaimed lost capacity amounting to around 25% of its data centre s total volume at a return on investment of millions. Consider what a 25% capacity claw back would be worth to your business. Getting started with the Virtual Facility headache Developing new ways of working can be challenging and is often best taken one step at a time. We recommend that data centre operators with multiple facilities identify a pilot site to use as a basis for building their first Virtual Facility. The virtual model can then be aligned to any existing DCIM systems, monitoring tools or change management databases, as well as being fully incorporated into the facility management processes. Once this pilot is up and running, it will be possible to determine what is required to roll the solution out across the entire data centre estate, a task with which numerous consultants and/or hardware suppliers can be called upon to help. Whatever your requirements, Future Facilities will give you all the help you need to get started. But time is of the essence: decisions being taken right now could be jeopardising millions of dollars worth of investment in your data centre. Shouldn t those decision-makers have the chance to see the future rather than running blindly into it? futurefacilities.com 7