Intelligent Data Centres Issue 19 | Page 20

DATA CENTRE PREDICTIONS failures to warn operations and maintenance (O&M) personnel ahead of time, or to furnish additional information to aid decision-making. assistants, home automation and digital marketing. But how does AI fit into the data centre? While the world is just getting started with exploring what AI can do, it turns out that there are many applicable use cases that can impact the data centre. These range from using AI to improve safety and reliability, efficiency and even in the reduction of energy consumption in data centres. Pushing the envelope of AI in efficient energy use Energy consumption is a top consideration for data centres everywhere. The increasing demand for high-performance computing across the industry is driving an increase in highdensity servers, the use of GPUs, as well as specialised AI processing chips. These systems generate significantly more heat than traditional CPUs, making heat dissipation an increasingly vital topic in data centres. This was the reason behind the development of Huawei’s iCooling intelligent thermal management solution for data centre infrastructure. Before AI is introduced, various equipment such as air conditioners, chillers, cooling towers and water pumps are simply controlled by BMS to ensure the normal and safe operation. The cooling system, however, cannot run at the optimal efficiency point. Huawei iCooling system incorporates Deep Learning to draw the appropriate correlations between various cooling equipment with actual IT loads and environment variables. ONE OF THE CHIEF USES OF AI IS SURELY TO IMPROVE THE SAFETY AND RELIABILITY OF DATA CENTRES. The iCooling system achieves this by analysing a vast amount of historical data and the impact on energy consumption to create a PUE prediction model. An optimisation algorithm then establishes the ideal parameters which are transmitted to various control systems. At Huawei’s cloud data centre, Langfang, in North China, the deployment of iCooling resulted in a PUE that is 8% lower, saving millions of renminbi in power costs annually. Maximising data centre value with AI One of the chief uses of AI is surely to improve the safety and reliability of data centres. Before AI is introduced, the fault can be detected only after the component is faulty generally, affecting the UPS’s availability. By collecting information from the power supply and distribution system, AI-powered systems can predict impending device and component On that front, the Huawei iPower intelligent power supply and distribution technology was developed to improve data centre availability. Equipped with a response time measured in milliseconds, iPower can detect, isolate and recover from faults at sub-second speeds to eliminate fire risks and improve the reliability of a data centre’s power infrastructure. It can also accurately predict battery lifespan and health, allowing preventive maintenance to be performed before they fail. In a data centre, IT devices are often deployed or removed from shelves, which brings a lot of fragmented resources, such as U space, which cannot be monitored or managed and is easily wasted. The AI-based iManager data centre infrastructure management system uses intelligent hardware and IoT sensors to keep a close eye on the data centre and reduce repetitive work through automation. The system manages resources such as power, cooling and space to optimise utilisation, relying on AI to intelligently manage the allocation, deallocation and operations of assets for improved operational efficiency and reliability. With the introduction of iManager, the resource utilisation rate is increased by 20%. Huawei iManager also supports network management, with centralised managing for multiple data centres across different locations. As Edge data centres grow in popularity, this can reduce the need for site visits, allowing for more efficient data centre management. It should be no surprise that organisations that require infrastructure with the utmost reliability and performance turn to Huawei. Today, we have delivered more than 800 large data centres around the globe and provided customers with solutions that are efficient, reliable, simplified construction and smart O&M. ◊ 20 Issue 19 www.intelligentdatacentres.com