Options Technology: Managed Services Provider Reduces Datacentre PUE and Hotspots Across Global Sites

Challenge

• Ability to monitor, alert and report on power utilisation across the global data centre estate
• Optimise power and rack space utilisation
• Integrate a management solution with a multi-vendor infrastructure
• Balance power loads to increase efficiencies

Options Technology is a premium technology infrastructure service provider operating exclusively in the Financial Services sector. It provides services globally to over 130 firms, including leading hedge funds, broker/dealers, proprietary trading firms, funds of funds and private equity houses. Options’ clients operate 24×7 and transact billions across its PIPE® platform. Critical to its success are high reliability and low latency.

Options runs its own data centre in London and delivers services from over 20 colocation facilities worldwide. With a rapidly growing business, a focus on reliability and an acute awareness of growing energy prices, the company sought ways to optimise its data centre and rack layouts in order to balance loads, increase densities and maximise efficiencies. What Options lacked was a suitable tool to enable this, a challenge made harder by the multi-vendor nature of its infrastructure, ranging from chillers to UPS to rack PDUs (Power Distribution Units). It needed a DCIM (Data Centre Infrastructure Management) solution that could cope with such a dynamic environment.

Seeking a solution, Options reviewed several products, including the latest release of the incumbent APC solution, but was particularly struck by InSite’s ease of use and flexibility compared to other products. “Too many DCIM products on the market are over-complicated, are not intuitive to use and come with a price tag that makes them unattractive,” says John Bryant, CTO.

Solution

• Automated, real-time power monitoring with InSite
• Global view of all facilities down to rack level
• Web-based business reporting anytime and anywhere

Following the product trials, Options decided that InSite offered the best value solution for its complex, multi-site environment. It quickly became apparent to Glenn Selby, Data Centre Manager, that InSite offered the solution he needed:

“InSite provides the real-time monitoring we need combined with an in-depth reporting suite which provides detailed analysis on rack-level power consumption and other key operational variables.”

Each Options rack is fitted with two metered PDUs (mostly single-phase but some 3-phase) connected to an IP management network.

For each rack, Glenn wanted to be able to see individual and combined PDU power data in real-time as well as set alarm thresholds for individual and combined PDUs. For example, he wanted to be notified if a group of 4 racks pulled more than a set number of kw.

In addition to the rack PDUs, the sites contained UPS, chillers and AHUs (Air Handling Units) which needed to be monitored. Options also wanted to monitor site PUE values. All the devices supported SNMP.

A VMware ESX virtual machine was configured, and the InSite software was deployed. Supported by AdInfa, the Options team configured dashboards and reports in InSite to provide information that different staff and executives needed.

Operations staff view live infrastructure maps, allowing drill-down to floorplans and individual racks to see real-time activity. Senior managers review automated reports showing power consumption by site, customer, and rack. Reports are visible online via the InSite web portal and emailed automatically.

“We have improved the monitoring of our power estate, reduced PUE and seen a return on our investment within 6 months.”
— John Bryant, CTO, Options

Results

“Before implementing InSite we were spending hours each month accumulating power usage data from each site, aggregating it and creating spreadsheets — all done manually. Now it is done automatically in the background by InSite,” says Glenn Selby.

In addition to saving man-hours each month, AdInfa has enabled Options to detect high power draw hotspots and load balance them by placing lower draw racks in adjacent areas.

“We have improved the monitoring of our power estate, delivered power load balancing, reduced PUE and have seen a return on our investment within 6 months,” says John Bryant.

• Reduced PUE
• Load-balanced power draw across datacentre
• Automated reports
• Visual representation of all data centres delivered through a secure web portal
• 6-month ROI