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Established in 1877, the University of Manitoba represented the first university in western Canada, and has since grown into one of the country’s top research institutions. Supporting some 29,000 undergraduate and graduate students, the university offers two main campuses in Winnipeg and more than 100 programs across multiple faculties and schools, providing more learning, teaching and research opportunities than any other post-secondary institution in the province.
Read how the university utilized Eaton data center software to gain a comprehensive view across its entire facility, with data and metrics that have helped the institution optimize efficiency and ensure high reliability.
In 2013, the University of Manitoba began investigating options that would allow staff members to monitor power, temperature and humidity within the data center. In addition to wanting to keep a constant pulse on environmental factors, the university desired a tool that it could implement for 3D modeling purposes. Visual Capacity Optimization Manager (VCOM), Eaton’s Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) solution, became of interest to the university.
“VCOM has been a fantastic addition to our data center suite of tools. The support has been great, and Eaton really helps make everything simple to set up and keep updated. The product really does speak for itself!”
VCOM’s environmental monitoring capability was a primary feature that appealed to the University of Manitoba. The software allows staff members to create real-time thermal imaging profiles of the data center environment related to temperature, humidity, leak detection, door closure and air pressure data. “We primarily monitor power, temperature and humidity,” Verreault says. “We can monitor the incoming UPS power, as well as power at the rack PDU level ── and everywhere in between.”
The University of Manitoba is also taking advantage of VCOM’s 3D rendering capabilities, which are available at all levels of the data center as well as across the enterprise. The tool, which can incorporate power, space, environment, IT networking and virtualization parameters, allows the university to identify potential problems in a wide array of IT assets, including physical servers, VM hosts, VM guests, switches, rack PDUs, UPSs and large facility devices.
“Currently we use it for the 3D modeling of the room and cabinets themselves,” Verreault notes, “as well as environmental aspects, including network, cabling and power. The 3D client is also great for being able to show managers and directors a 3D model of the room.”
As a result of the information gleaned through VCOM, the University of Manitoba has been able to reduce inefficiencies in cooling, as well as optimize other environmental parameters. The software is not only instrumental in reducing inefficiencies in power, cooling and space, but is especially advantageous in multi-tenant facilities as it provides views across many clients, with billing parameters for power, cooling and space.
“Temperature and humidity monitoring displays very well in the 3D model and makes it easy to spot warm spots in the room, which has helped us improve overall cooling efficiency."
In addition to helping reduce data center operational expenses, improve system and application reliability, and mitigate risk through data analysis, VCOM gives users the ability to easily track usage, utilization, capacity limits and more. In turn, the software enables data center personnel to react quickly to potential problems through immediate and accurate location of faulty devices, as well as root cause and impact analyses.
Furthermore, through custom reporting and dashboards, data center personnel can examine multi-level reports, role-based dashboards, KPI tracking, trending and predictive analytics. In addition, an integrated rack building tool allows users to build each rack using a repository of more than 20,000 devices to deliver an accurate and visual display of the data center. Furthermore, IT staff can utilize “what-if” scenarios to understand current usage and ensure capacity for upcoming projects.
“It’s a great tool for incorporating several monitoring methods into one place. Being able to view so many metrics with one piece of software is a great asset and the dashboards allow a less technical view for managers who just want to know everything is running properly.”
