TrendPoint Announces Expansion of Partnership with Facebook

The data center is the factory floor of the information age. How well it is managed can mean the difference between profit and loss, an angry or satisfied customer, or money and resources conserved or needlessly wasted. Efficiency underpins successful management of IT infrastructure as the scale and complexity of some of the world's biggest data center networks continues to expand.

We introduced readers to TrendPoint last year, a growing company manufacturing utility-grade data center power and cooling monitoring systems for mission-critical applications. TrendPoint designs and engineers a powerful set of cost-effective sub-metering devices, allowing users to more effectively track power consumption, maximize uptime and manage power distribution resources throughout an entire facility. As the old adage goes: You can't manage what you don't measure.

This fall, TrendPoint released its latest addition to the EnerSure line of products, the EnerSure Enkapsis 3-Phase Power Quality Meter (PQM). The PQM provides full power quality monitoring, environmental sensor support and the addition of high-speed waveform capture at 133 samples per cycle.

Say what?

Essentially, the ability to capture waveform data at high speed enables data center managers to quickly spot and assess power spikes and anomalies for better decision making and rapid problem solving.

“In the realm of power meters, it’s definitely at the top of the spectrum in terms of the accuracy and comprehensiveness of the metrics provided,” says Jon Trout, TrendPoint’s chief technology officer, in a press release. “Most power meters cannot measure power fast enough to provide a visual rendering of a trend. Enkapsis gives data managers the insights and intelligence that they need to identify and resolve issues quickly.”

Risking a bit more geek-speak, the Enkapis PQM provides "both THD [total harmonic distortion] and waveform capture metrics, plus all your downstream power and environmental monitoring," adds Trout.  "It really captures the concept of Platform Metering."

The Enkapsis PQM works either as a stand-alone meter or as the hub of TrendPoint’s Branch Circuit Monitoring (BCM) modules designed to interact with enterprise Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) and Building Management (BMS) systems.

It all gets back to measuring what you hope to manage. The better you can measure, the better you can manage. For a data center, metering and monitoring of power and data infrastructure at a granular level allows greater power utilization, efficiency and uptime. This improves reliability, reduces costs and lightens a data center's resource footprint.

Facebook and TrendPoint partnership expands

Two years ago TrendPoint began working with Facebook in their effort to deploy Branch Circuit Monitoring across multi-vendor busway and panelboard power distribution in multiple data facilities around the world. On Tuesday, Dec. 16, TrendPoint and Facebook announced the expansion of this partnership with the introduction of the EnerSure Enkapsis into Facebook's data center monitoring infrastructure.  The new Enkapsis system ties in seamlessly with legacy TrenPoint devices, enhancing Facebook's DCIM initiative by adding Total Harmonic Distortion and Waveform Capture analysis capabilities.

Every TrendPoint power meter uses a common chipset, configuration tool and protocol map/mib (management information base) reducing the cost of deployment, integration and operation -- what TrendPoint calls their Platform Monitoring approach. With the adoption of the EnerSure Enkapsis, this integrated and comprehensive approach is a core component of Facebook's DCIM system.

“Power efficiency is a key priority as we continue to scale, and with four data centers in the U.S. and Europe, we are always looking for ways to optimize our data center operations,” said Tom Furlong, Facebook's vice president of infrastructure. “TrendPoint Systems will provide us with a granular understanding of power consumption across our distribution equipment – information that will help us improve our IT infrastructure."

It's probably a safe bet that most of Facebook's 1.2+ billion users don't care or know much about power management, branch circuit monitoring or waveform capture metrics. They just want to post their status updates and like those of their friends. But for Facebook, the continued success and growth of the world's largest social network depends on the constant, integrated and highly discrete monitoring and metering of their vast data systems. It's not an easy task.

"Facebook’s critical facilities team does an excellent job leveraging the EnerSure platform as well as best in class software applications to drive energy efficiency and reduce operating costs across their global data center footprint,” says TrendPoint's Trout.

Go ahead, give it a try -- like TrendPoint on Facebook!

Image credit: Intel Free Press, courtesy Flickr