Improving Data Center Efficiency Means Talking to Everything

The mission critical environment of a data center for Fortune 50 financial companies requires the highest degree of infrastructure reliability. Thousands of computers use large quantities of electricity, creating lots of heat that as a result takes more power to extract and keep the data center cool - and operating efficiently. Caspian Technology Concepts, headquartered in Milwaukee Wisconsin, is in the business of designing, building, monitoring and maintaining exactly this type of data center for one of their customers in the financial industry. A recent project required updating the automation system that monitors and controls a 20,000 square foot facility. This space houses over 100 server cabinets, each of which can be using upwards of 3,000 watts. For Caspian, they are not engaged in merely 'running' a data center. Today's global, 24x7 business day requires the most efficient means of managing a company's most critical data. When they were faced with a major challenge, Caspian worked with the leader in communication automation services, Kepware. Partnering with Kepware meant that they could see through the project requirement of improving the overall efficiency of the data center, as well as managing the upgrade to a single automated, monitoring system. With this implementation, Caspian saved the customer additional money by customizing a solution that allowed communication with devices that otherwise they could not talk to. The customer had selected a Siemens Power Management solution called WinPM to supervise the server cabinets, and the variety of on-site equipment ranging from backup power generators to the 27, thirty-ton cooling units. WinPM was selected for its detailed reporting capabilities. A key factor to efficiently managing this large of a system. But even more critical to the overall effectiveness of a single automation system, is the ability for all the systems to talk to each other. And sometimes, they do not speak the same language! Typical WinPM Power Management Reports Within a vast data center footprint, there are various automation components from multiple vendors. Multiple vendors also mean multiple communication protocols. There are 3 main protocols in this industry: BACnet, Modbus and SNMP. This particular facility relied on predominantly Modbus compliant equipment. Most of it anyway. However, an integral part of the infrastructure that supported the heating and cooling of all the server cabinets utilized SNMP. They employed a power monitoring and control system offered by Eaton Corporation, called an ePDU (enclosure Power Distribution Unit). The challenge facing the Caspian team was to be able to maintain a single monitoring system without a costly replacement project. At over $1000 for each of the 130-plus ePDUs, replacement was not an option. But the capabilities of the ePDUs to monitor power consumption and remotely control the power to each outlet is vital to monitoring, and improving the data center efficiency. Because these systems could not be directly monitored by the selected system, Caspian engineers sought a solution to convert the SNMP communications to Modbus, so that the existing ePDUs could be integrated with the Siemens' WinPM. One of many ePDU Styles available from Eaton Caspian engineers went out to find possible options for vendors who could provide communication integration both for Modbus and SNMP. They came across a vendor called Kepware. Not knowing much about the Kepware offering, they researched the company and were impressed with the wide-range of companies that Kepware partnered with. A quick download of products from the Kepware website enabled Caspian engineers to perform a proof of concept based on Kepware's Demo products. All worked as expected and the decision to implement the Kepware solution was made. They were confident Kepware would stand behind its products. The solution took the form of two products offered by Kepware: KEPServerEX is the communications solution that supports a wide variety of protocols. LinkMaster is a solution for mapping data Tags from one protocol to the data Tags of another. KEPServerEX was purchased with support for two drivers. The first was an SNMP Driver that has the ability to poll the ePDUs for information and capture Traps, which are the notifications from SNMP compliant devices. And secondly, a Modbus Slave driver which is capable of simulating a Modbus device so that the Siemens WinPM solution can integrate the ePDU data with all other monitoring it is performing. LinkMaster, a separate product that runs alongside KEPServerEX, and is configured to take data from the SNMP based devices and map the data to corresponding Modbus emulated devices. These products simply run on a server installed in one of the control cabinets, and feed data up to the Siemens WinPM product. This was the first time Caspian engineers had worked with Kepware products. The development of the several thousand Tags needed in their application was greatly facilitated by the ability to export a simple configuration in XML, open the file with Microsoft Excel using its features to generate a much larger database, and then importing result to KEPServer for operation. Caspian engineers had complete control over the communications update rates and how data is transferred from SNMP protocol to the Modbus Slave driver. Once installed, the operation was repeatable and reliable. When asked about their experience and if they would use the Kepware products again, Dale Boehm - President of Caspian said, "Our experience with Kepware products was very good and we expect to be using their products much more going forward. This is exactly the tool we need in our bag of tricks, as we integrate the disparate products we encounter in legacy system upgrades." Return to Kepware Solution Chronicles Page »»