Cofely Services’ Agility data centre in Belgium serves in-house GDF SUEZ Group clients and external customers with an independent ICT infrastructure. The centre is the first in Europe to offer Datacenter Clarity LC with 3D visualisation, which offers a virtual tour through the data centre infrastructure while managing and monitoring remotely. The 3D visualisation adds transparency to the data centre infrastructure, delivering accessible reporting, optimised operations, smarter decision, higher flexibility and future-proof architecture, according to the product firm Siemens. Datacenter Clarity LC monitors and evaluates the performance of a data centre and bridges the gap between IT and facilities management creating a systematic and automated workplace for a business-critical resource such as the Agility Data Centre.
As data centres need to consume energy, Cofely Services decoded to focus on large-scale sustainability. One of the basic requirements for Agility Centre Cofely was a DCIM platform that would provide an overview of all assets. Datacenter Clarity LC optimises energy consumption thereby facilitating the cost effective operations that the Agility data centre required.
Alexandre Gera, Data Centre Manager for Cofely Services in Belgium and its Agility Data Centre, says: “We definitely needed a software tool that could monitor, manage, and measure our data centre performance, usage, and energy consumption in relation to our building management system (BMS). As such, the platform also had to be configured for power usage effectiveness (PUE) as well as water and carbon usage effectiveness (WUE and CUE).
“By delivering a guaranteed level of efficiency, it qualified as a ‘green’ data centre. We did not plan on a standard platform, but we really needed a very flexible and high-performance DCIM that could handle multiple features in order to ‘tour’ through the data storage. It had to provide an overview of all assets, like usage parameters, capacity numbers, and energy consumption.
“Siemens offered us the Datacenter Clarity LC software tool with a complete package of features, which were flexible enough to be evaluated and modified during the rollout of the project. It also allowed us to insert additional features like a ticketing module or a maintenance tool at any stage,” says Alexandre.
Datacenter Clarity LC is software that delivers Data Centre Infrastructure Management (DCIM) and, the developers say, guarantees a scalable, secure, seamless, resilient and intelligent data centre. Siemens designed the solution and architecture of the Datacenter Clarity LC platform, installed and deployed it, and arranged the integration with the existing building management system used by Cofely Services. “Datacenter Clarity LC at our Agility Data Centre is the key to any facility information, whether it concerns our own data or that of our clients,” Alexandre adds.
“It offers all information and knowledge related to the IT assets and the technical infrastructure and can be tracked daily. Clients can rely on a high-end environment for their IT infrastructure, and the overall view is managed and monitored with only one dedicated software tool. We are the first in Europe to offer a DCIM platform with 3D visualisation. Our Agility data centre is a Tier III+ with an excellent PUE score. This is a key metric that compares energy use for the overall facility to that of the IT equipment. An ideal metric would be a 1.0 score, where all energy is used for IT equipment and there is no additional waste. A typical data centre’s PUE is 2.0. Cofely Services has designed and met its target of PUE 1.3, which represents a strong performance for a Tier III+ data centre requiring high resilience and redundancies.” Visit www.siemens.com/buildingtechnologies.
