Efficient Data Center Management in Remote Settings: Insights from Nitin Gavade, Vertiv India

CXOToday has engaged in an exclusive interview with Nitin Gavade is Director – Offering Management Global Edge (ASI) + Racks ITMS (India)

Vertiv is a digital infrastructure provider that integrates hardware, software, analytics, and ongoing services to enable its customers’ vital applications to run continuously, perform optimally, and grow with their business needs. Vertiv helps to resolve some of the most critical challenges faced by data centers, communication networks, and commercial and industrial facilities. Vertiv has a versatile portfolio of power, cooling, and IT infrastructure solutions and services spanning from the cloud to the network edge. The company serves a wide range of industries, including data centres, telecommunications, healthcare, financial services, and more.

Vertiv’s product portfolio includes power management solutions including uninterruptible power supplies (UPS), power distribution units (PDUs), and transfer switches; thermal management solutions such as precision cooling systems, thermal management software, and rack cooling units; and IT management solutions such as KVMs, Serial Console, infrastructure management software, racks, and cabinets. We help businesses maximize efficiency, deliver flexibility, and ensure scalability, with customized pre-tested and pre-integrated data centers, and ease the process of expanding core data centers and critical facility capacities. Our global solutions enable new possibilities at the edge by developing and delivering scalable, tailored data centers that expedite deployment, limit risk, and control costs. Some of our brands include Alber™, Avocent®, Geist™, Liebert®, and NetSure™, among others.

Vertiv’s mission is to assist customers in keeping critical systems operational and ensuring that their businesses can continue to operate in the face of unexpected events or disruptions.

1. What kind of data center solutions do you offer to your customers?

Our data center infrastructure portfolio includes prefabricated modular solutions and integrated solutions, thermal and power management systems, uninterruptible power supply systems (UPS), and IT management systems to support network closets, micro data centers, edge data centers, core data centers, colocation, and cloud. Some of the data centre solutions offered by us include:

• Micro data centers: Vertiv micro data centers align power, cooling, monitoring, and racks with business needs and constraints. Our solutions team works with customers, from developing the initial requirements through project execution, allowing them to focus on their core business. Our micro data center solutions give them a new way to deploy data center capacity in any space or place.
• Edge data center: Vertiv unlocks new possibilities at the edge by designing and delivering scalable, customized data centers that speed deployment, minimize risk, and control costs. Implemented from dozens to hundreds of customized modular edge data centers that are built to maximize flexibility, improve scale, and boost efficiency.
• Core data center: Vertiv’s solutions allow for easy capacity expansion of core data centers and critical facilities. Vertiv uses modular integration techniques to help our customers, contractors, and consulting partners more effectively design and build data centers. We offer flexible, scalable, and efficient solutions that are pre-engineered, prefabricated, and pre-tested, before being rapidly deployed and assembled on-site.

2. With hybrid working now becoming the norm, can you highlight the importance of IT infrastructure to support remote work?

For the past few years, technology and IT infrastructure have been pivotal in supporting remote operations for organizations that have adopted hybrid work models. Upgrading existing IT infrastructure has been crucial to facilitate communication and collaboration between teams after shifting to hybrid working. Additionally, data security poses a significant challenge for IT teams, given that employees work from so many different locations, making it more difficult to safeguard critical company data. Therefore, it is crucial for organizations to have the appropriate IT infrastructure to ensure secure data handling.

Some infrastructures that support hybrid work include-

• Creating virtual workplaces to help businesses share data and information in a secure manner.
• Solutions that support the remote management and monitoring of factory floors, data center sites, and mission critical equipment.
• With the increasing adoption of emerging technologies like Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning, the amount of data being generated has increased exponentially. Organizations need hybrid cloud architectures to store and analyze this data efficiently and securely.

3. How can data centres be managed efficiently in a remote setting?

The industry has adopted data center infrastructure monitoring solutions to enable remote management of facilities. This model allows for 24/7 monitoring by remote experts, providing technical expertise when needed. Infrastructure monitoring helps streamline data center management by offering emergency services, improving energy efficiency, adding resiliency, and enhancing standard maintenance.

Each data center is unique and requires customized planning and monitoring for control and visibility. Our tailored solutions enable effective management through enhanced visibility and control. We combine infrastructure monitoring, intelligent controls, and centralized management systems to optimize equipment availability, utilization, and efficiency.

Our infrastructure monitoring solutions provide real-time visibility and control for optimizing data center operations. Our IT management solutions ensure secure access and protection for IT systems, improving security and efficiency. We offer digital infrastructure solutions for both enterprise and edge environments, featuring a scalable ecosystem of IT management devices and software on a secure and open platform. With our serial consoles and gateways, remote access to IT equipment for configuration, upgrades, troubleshooting, and more is possible, even without an IP connection. Our secure KVM solutions enable secure interaction with peripheral sharing devices, meeting government specifications. Through our IP KVM offerings, organizations can gain single-console control over local or remote servers, achieve accurate image reproduction in broadcast control rooms, and manage IT equipment from any location with internet access. Lastly, our software products provide real-time visibility, flexibility, and central management to protect power and cooling assets.

4. What trends do you anticipate in the data centre market in 2023?

Every year Vertiv comes out with a report highlighting trends that we anticipate in the data center industry. As for this year’s report, we see the industry managing consumption and carbon footprint driving trends toward regulation, standardization, and the search for generator alternatives. More information below on each of these trends-

• Hyperscalers and others shop off the rack: According to a recent Omdia survey, 99% of enterprise data center operators say prefabricated, modular data center designs will be a part of their future data center strategy. That’s more than a trend; it’s the new normal. In 2023, Vertiv’s experts anticipate a continuing shift in the same direction among hyperscalers as they seek the speed and efficiencies standardization delivers.
• Diesel generators see real competition: The diesel generator has long been an imperfect but inescapable piece of the data center ecosystem. It represents stored energy that largely goes unused while still requiring maintenance or fuel replacement after periods of inactivity. Then, when pressed into service, generators produce carbon emissions operators are desperately trying to avoid. Already, some organizations are relying on batteries for longer load support – up to five minutes in some cases – and even designing their data centers with minimal generator capacity.
• Higher densities alter thermal strategies: After years of relatively static rack densities, data center operators are increasingly requesting higher-density racks. According to the Uptime Institute’s 2022 Global Data Center Survey, more than a third of data center operators say their rack densities have rapidly increased in the past three years. This is especially true among larger enterprise and hyperscale data centers, where nearly half of those operating facilities at 10MW and above reported racks above 20kW and 20% claimed racks higher than 40kW.
• 5G meets the metaverse at the edge: India is set to have around 31 million 5G users by the end of this year, and the number is set to reach 690 million by 2028, according to Ericsson’s Mobility Report for November 2022. As the edge of the network becomes more sophisticated, so will the infrastructure needed to support it. This will include technologies such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality planning and management systems.