International 6SigmaDC User Conference and Training

The two day event included user presentations and advanced tutorials, as well as workshops on efficiency, calibration, troubleshooting and industry standards using the 6SigmaDC software suite.

Future Facilities will provide training and user case studies to help attendees learn new applications, exchange information, and get more out of the 6SigmaDC software.

The event was the perfect setting for 6SigmaDC users to discuss the software and learn from others.

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Day One:

Keynote Speaker: Fred Stack
A recognized leader in the industry, Fred is Vice President of Marketing for Liebert Precision Cooling, Emerson Network Power and Chairman of ASHRAE Technical Committee 9.9. Mr. Stack will enlighten the 6SigmaDC user community with an overview of the coming power efficiency and reliability challenges that will be affecting us all. Of particular focus will be an overview of where ASHRAE TC9.9 and the industry as a whole is headed to address these issues.

User presentations based on case studies using 6SigmaDC
1. Adam Green of Dell
  Staying One Step Ahead, Operational Management of Data Centers through Simulation
  This presentation looks at:
  1. Modeling the impact of IT and infrastructure changes on cooling system performance
  2. Predicting environmental conditions that drive power consumption and hot spots
  3. Understanding the fundamental conditions for high efficiency and full operational integrity and
  4. how industry best practices can fall short
  5. A Dell data center case study
2. Chris Noland and Vipha Kanakakorn of Cisco
  This case study looks at a Cisco facility where airflow modeling led to a 20% improvement in cooling system efficiency. The presentation outlines how 6SigmaDC simulation can be used to increase efficiency and reduce energy costs in data centers without putting IT equipment at risk.
3. Majid Safavi of Alcatel-Lucent
  It is well known that there is a lack of effective communication today between the equipment manufacturers and their eventual customers- Data Center Owner/Operators. Alcatel-Lucent is taking the necessary steps using 6SigmaDC to overcome the gaps to streamline the design process all the way from the chip to the Data Center.
  The presentation will showcase the overall process from component to the server level using 6SigmaET and integrating it to the Data Center using 6SigmaRack and Room. This revolutionary analysis technique will provide the necessary insight into field failures & equipment performance, in-situ. The information collected will be used to drive thermal-mechanical design process at the chip, board and server level. This will also help in the creation of library items that will have more information such as fan algorithms, power dissipation etc.
4. Brent Goren of Wrightline
  This is a cold aisle containment case study conducted at Baycare Health Systems Facility.
  The initial cold aisle installation was unsuccessful, showing unexpected results with little benefit. In conjunction with Future Facilities, Wright line Professional Services conducted thorough field measurements of the cold aisle containment region and formulated finite boundary CFD models in 6SigmaDC. The resulting model highlighted the root cause of the problems, and thus provided the ability to resolve the underlying issues.
5. Ehsaan Farsimadan of Cundall
  During a site power failure, the chillers may go offline for some minutes, affecting the temperature and delivery of chilled water to the CRAC units. This will cause the air temperature to rise within the data halls. The ultimate test of robustness is to ensure that the IT equipment is adequately cooled during this time. This work outlines the key findings from a study using 6Sigma DC and FluidFlow into the thermal response of a Data centre cooling system to a worst case power failure scenario.
  Following this is an overview of best practice in design using 6SigmaDC, and three short case studies from real projects undertaken over the last year.
6. Keith Ward of Oracle
  The focus of this presentation will be on why Oracle selected 6Sigma as their capacity planning tool for the Austin Data Center, a 5 acre facility that is the hub of Oracle’s day-to-day operations. The steps taken to build the largest Virtual Facility model in 6SigmaDC will be outlined, including leveraging the existing Oracle asset database. Baseline results will be discussed, and in addition, advanced cooling technologies from OpenGate Data Systems will be showcased. The insight provided by the baseline model will be used for future equipment deployments and capacity planning along with potential integration with real time asset management and monitoring systems to keep the VF up to date.

Day Two:

6SigmaDC Product Road Map
What lies in store for Future Facilities and 6SigmaDC? This session will provide:
1. A chance for users to have an input into the future of 6SigmaDC, including questions and new feature demonstrations.
2. Discussion of industry standards for simulations, including standards in calibration and data transfer

Surveying, Calibration and Troubleshooting Tutorial

Future Facilities pride ourselves on producing the most sophisticated and accurate models of data centres using the 6SigmaDC suite of products. One of the major factors ensuring the quality of the model is the time and care spent site surveying the data centre. As detailed as drawings can be, more often than not things are different in the real data centre. Construction is rarely a precise replication of the original planned drawings, and these differences need to be reflected in the model. This interactive presentation/ tutorial will show the typical difficulties encountered during model creation. This tutorial will lay out the activities performed during a survey and highlight areas where care and diligence will lead to a more representative model.
We will be sharing our tips and tricks for easier construction of a Virtual Facility for an existing data center and show you how to overcome differences between measured and simulated data.

Energy Efficiency Tutorial
This tutorial will help you to take the skills you have learnt from building Virtual Facilities in the software and apply them to one of the most popular, but open-ended questions asked of the Data Centre Manager: "Can we make our facility more energy efficient, and how much money can we save?"
An Energy Efficient Data Centre can be described as a data centre that houses the largest amount of processes, for the least amount of expended energy. From this we can see that there are two approaches we can take to increase the energy efficiency of our data centre: a) increase the number of processes available for the same amount of energy or b) decrease the amount of energy needed to support the same amount of processes. During this interactive tutorial, the Virtual Facility is used to implement common energy saving techniques to try and make a data center more efficient and cost effective.

Closing
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About Future Facilities
Future Facilities is a leading provider of powerful design, optimization and management software for mission critical facilities and data centers. The company’s solutions are applied to ensure all capacity, efficiency and reliability criteria are met throughout all phases of the facility lifecycle.