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For many of today’s data center professionals, it seems that everything is always happening at once – whether it be protecting a growing number of mission-critical applications, managing highly complex and heterogeneous environments, or evaluating the newest data center solutions.

Adding to this daily challenge of multi-tasking, most companies are now undergoing the process of digital transformation. This means that they are deploying more technology with the same resources and flat budgets. This combination of factors leaves data center teams with severely limited bandwidth to support their operations.

The data center administrators, networking specialists and data center managers I meet often need extra help in order to deal with their ever-widening scope of responsibilities. With that in mind, I’m sharing some free tools that were designed to simplify daily planning, product selection and education tasks, while ensuring smarter long-term data center builds.

Smart Tools for Busy Data Center Professionals

Many data center vendors provide tools for customers, but they are often difficult to learn and use. We at Schneider Electric took a different approach and offer customers certain tools aligned to their needs around procuring, implementing and supporting data center physical infrastructure solutions.

Below is a quick list of top tools to help choose, monitor and manage power, cooling, racks and environmental control devices:

• Data Center Planning – Schneider Electric’s Data Center Science Center team has built online TradeOff Tools to help you quickly experiment with “what if” scenarios to help with critical planning decisions like understanding the cost implications of deploying different power and cooling technologies. These TradeOff Tools are web-based, mobile-friendly and help data center operations quantify their decisions using data and science.
• Research-based Designs – Choose from a library of tested, validated, and documented reference designs that enable data center professionals to determine key project parameters such as criticality, density, efficiency and budget. Recent enhancements to this library include greatly improved search, filtering and sorting functions, a reference design “details” page that simplifies information access and summarizes design benefits, and an easy-to-use CAPEX cost estimator. The information from the library can also be shared via social media. Once an approved reference design is chosen, it serves as a starting point for site-specific deployment. Reference designs make data center revitalization projects go more smoothly, cost less, and operate reliably over the long run.

• Easy Product Selection – Several important product selector tools exist online to help save you time and money. These selectors cover UPSs, battery upgrades and rack PDU configurators. The UPS selector, for example, specifies the equipment you need to protect your IT assets and recommends the right product based on your specific needs. The selector determines the power draw of your equipment by asking you simple questions about your system and then querying an extensive database for the UPS that will provide the best fit. Also, check out our SketchFab tool which provides a 3D visual product overview to simplify decision making. 

EcoStruxure Pod Data Center [Formerly HyperPod] by Schneider Electric on Sketchfab

• OnDemand Education – Our White Paper app provides users with convenient on and offline access to content, a robust search engine, and up-to-date research authored by our seasoned experts. Our APC blog provides thought leadership-based insights to keep readers up to date with the industry’s fast-moving data center trends.

Start Using These Resources for Your Data Center Solutions

Data center teams are integral to the business impact their companies’ make on customers. Their time is precious, and Schneider offers tools that can simplify their daily tasks. Where to begin? How about visiting our newly, redesigned data center product selector page and see how easy it is to find the right product for your business needs.

Have you used these tools? Let me know – I’m interested to hear about how they’ve helped you and/or your team.

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