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 The new Ri-Zone infrastructure management software is used to monitor components for power distribution and climate control, servers and the building management system. This is made possible by a Management Pack, which Rittal has developed in cooperation with Microsoft. As well as boosting reliability, the solution also makes data centres more cost-effective, because resources such as electricity and cooling output are provided in line with the server utilisation. This innovation will also be exhibited at the Microsoft stand.
In the past, server management and the monitoring of the corresponding physical infrastructure, such as climate control and power supply, were two separate worlds. A new software solution, designed by the IT infrastructure specialist Rittal in cooperation with Microsoft, now builds a bridge between the two.
The new Ri-Zone software from Rittal controls and regulates the entire IT infrastructure using the company’s own CMC-TC sensor-based monitoring system. It also interfaces with the building management system. The information recorded for the individual energy consumers can be displayed in kilowatts or CO2 or can be converted into actual costs and plotted continuously against time. A Management Pack can be used to integrate the software into the Microsoft System Center Operations Manager. In this way, administrators now have access to all the relevant parameters for their servers, applications and IT infrastructure at one user interface and can control them from there.
In addition to experiencing control of the data centre live at Cebit, visitors will also be given an insight into how tool manufacturer Leitz monitors its data centre in Oberkochen, where a Ri-Zone prototype is used to halve the energy consumption of the company’s cooling equipment.
“Regardless of whether it is used in large, midsize or small companies, Ri-Zone in conjunction with the Microsoft System Center Operations Manager offers a whole range of opportunities for boosting the efficiency of data centres,” says Helmut Binder, Executive Vice President IT at Rittal. For example, services required for night-time or weekend operation can be concentrated on selected servers and cooling output and energy supplied only to these specific units. The intelligent solution performs defined actions automatically. For example, if a virtualisation solution such as the Virtual Machine Manager is installed, services from an overheated rack can be switched to another server enclosure. Helmut Binder summarises the benefits for users: “This solution ensures that oversized cooling units and unnecessarily high power consumption in data centres are consigned to history.”
“This joint solution from Microsoft and Rittal enables companies to centralise control of their data centres, and to cut costs via reduced energy consumption”, says Ralph Haupter, Chief Operating Officer at Microsoft. “Companies of all sizes will benefit from this solution, and gain an important competitive lead in the current financial climate”.
Ri-Zone has a modular and scalable structure to ensure that it can grow in line with a company’s requirements. The key phrase here is “Pay as You Grow”, whereby data centres with a modular infrastructure can be adapted in flexible expansion phases to meet any new requirements. [www.rittal.de]
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