CA Technologies helps Facebook drive availability at the data centre level

The popular social networking platform Facebook uses CA DCIM (CA Data Center Infrastructure Management) software from CA Technologies to bring together energy-related data points from physical and IT resources in its global data centres to improve power efficiency, the vendor has announced. 
 
Facebook has data centres in Sweden and the US, and is reportedly looking to site a new data centre in Asia. On average, 189 million users from the Asia Pacific region visit Facebook daily as of September 2013, according to its SEC filing.

In searching for a DCIM vendor, Facebook considered a dozen vendors and required CA to complete a proof-of-concept, followed by a more extensive pilot in a 100,000-square-foot data centre. Upon completion of the pilot, Facebook worked with CA to create a custom solution to deliver on the energy-related DCIM requirements today and into the future.

“We are on a mission to help connect the world, and our IT infrastructure is core to our success,” said Tom Furlong, VP, Infrastructure Data Centers, Facebook. “We are continually looking at ways to optimise our data centres and bringing all of our energy-related information together in one spot was a core requirement.”

Facebook presented initial results of the Facebook and CA DCIM implementation at the Open Compute Project Summit 2014.

“Every single day, 728 million people actively use Facebook and expectations around quality of service, availability and reliability are extremely high,” said Terrence Clark, Senior VP, Infrastructure Management, CA Technologies. “This places significant demands on the IT infrastructure with little room for error or costly inefficiencies. 

"As a result, it is a top priority for Facebook’s IT and facilities teams to know as much as they can about how their infrastructure is performing from a power and cooling standpoint, where potential problems might lie with energy-related systems and where there are opportunities for associated cost savings.

“Facebook’s IT team can now bring this energy-related data into their broader DCIM system for an even more complete view of overall system status. They can then analyse all of the data in aggregate to make decisions to improve efficiency and reduce costs, while delivering a seamless customer experience and creating new opportunities for innovation.”

CA DCIM provides a web-based centralised solution for monitoring power, cooling and environmentals across facilities and IT systems in the data centre as well as managing the use of space and lifecycle of assets which make up the data centre infrastructure.