1. Modularity – Making
Your Data Center Agile
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Business-wise, Future-drivenTM

2. Business-wise, Future-drivenTM
Data Centers
Schneider Electric Table of Contents
Modularity – Making Your Data Center Agile
Table of Contents
Introduction..................................................................3
The Case for Agile Data Centers...................................4
Standardization + Configurability = Modularity..............7
The Human Apect........................................................8
Conclusion...................................................................9

3. Business-wise, Future-drivenTM
Modularity – Making Your Data Center Agile
Schneider Electric 3
Data Centers
Introduction
As your business grows and transforms, one of the most important things
you can do for your data center is to make it agile. Agile data centers deploy
quickly, scale as needed and can be reconfigured without much hassle. Most
importantly, agile data centers are right-sized and ultimately tie up fewer
resources – both upfront and on-going costs, space and manpower. When
resources are strained, agility offers simplicity and a lower total cost of
ownership. But, to envision what an agile data center might look like, we
must expand our minds beyond the limitations of traditional design. Here is a
list of questions to consider.
How do we make all of
the answers to these
questions “yes”?
Modular, standardized design
on open platforms. The purpose of this ebook is
show you how modularity can make it happen.
Agility: the ability of a system to adapt to change.

4. Business-wise, Future-drivenTM
Modularity – Making Your Data Center Agile
Schneider Electric 4
Data CentersThe Case for Agile Data Centers
Lower TCO
Before we talk about what traits make a data center agile, let’s
backtrack for a moment and take a closer look at why agility is just as
important as availability and lower total cost of ownership. Remember
the colocation companies of the dot.com bust? This is a classic
example of bankruptcy that could have been prevented with more
agile data centers. These companies invested huge amounts of capital
to develop solid, high security infrastructure they thought their
potential customers would need to host their critical IT equipment.
Because their systems couldn’t adapt to changing business
requirements, they planned for “worse case” in terms of capacity. The
amount of guesswork was immense. The result was a huge waste of
unused infrastructure, and depleted pocket books.
True, this is a worst case example, but consider the opportunity cost of
tying up so many resources building out data center physical
infrastructure (DCPI) that may not be fully used for another 10-15
years. In fact, agility is closely tied to cost of ownership. Think of all the
resources that get locked up in traditional data center design:
• Capital used to build out more infrastructure than is actually
needed today
• Cost to operate and maintain all the extra infrastructure
• Man power to manage and oversee it
Over the life of the facility, this costs a pretty penny. And the room for
error if you misjudge your long term needs is significant.
STANDARDIZATION
MODULAR
Reduce
CAPITAL
Cost
Reduce
Non-Energy
OPERATING
Cost
Reduce
ENERGY
Cost
TCOTCOTCO
STANDARDIZATION
MODULAR
STANDARDIZATION
MODULAR
Reduce
CAPITAL
Cost
Reduce
Non-Energy
OPERATING
Cost
Reduce
ENERGY
Cost
TCOTCOTCO

5. Business-wise, Future-drivenTM
Modularity – Making Your Data Center Agile
Schneider Electric 5
Data Centers
Reduce
MTTR
Increase
RELIABILITY
Reduce
HUMAN
ERROR
MODULAR
AVAILABILITYAVAILABILITY
Reduce
MTTR
Increase
RELIABILITY
Reduce
HUMAN
ERROR
MODULAR
AVAILABILITYAVAILABILITY
Increased Availability
Let’s look at this from one more angle: availability. How does non-agile,
traditional data center design affect uptime? Consider that IT equipment
is swapped out 4 or more times during the life of the data center – this
often changes the power, cooling and security requirements. As more
and more adaptations are made, the more complex and unstable the
data center environment becomes. This invites human error, the leading
cause of unplanned downtime (50-60%)1
, reduces the reliability of equip-
ment and can increase mean time to recover (MTTR) when an outage
occurs.
Modular, standardized design and open platforms can help with both as-
pects – total cost of ownership and availability – making your data center
agile and able to grow and adapt with your business.
Standardization vs. Uniqueness
Standardization and its close relative, modularity, create wide-ranging
benefits in data center physical infrastructure (DCPI) that streamline
and simplify every process from initial planning to daily operation, with
significant positive effects on all three major components of DCPI busi-
ness value – availability, agility, and total cost of ownership.
Uniqueness can be a wonderful thing. A striking building, Mom’s peach
pie, a piano sonata, art of every kind – no one would argue that
standardization has any place in experiences valued for their sensory
qualities or other interesting characteristics. Certain things are intended
to be unique, and they are the better for it.
The Case for Agile Data Centers
1
Based on studies by The Uptime Institute, 7x24 Exchange, and
confidential analysis by major financial firms using large-scale data centers.

6. Business-wise, Future-drivenTM
Modularity – Making Your Data Center Agile
Schneider Electric 6
Data Centers
Infrastructure is different. The time-tested characteristic that makes
infrastructure effective, reliable, predictable, and worry-free is the
opposite of uniqueness; it is standardization. One-time engineering
of an entire DCPI results in a unique system, with unique problems that
require unique diagnosis and repair – a process that is not only
expensive and time-consuming, but also provides little learning that
can be applied to further unique problems in the future, or to
problems at other data centers in the organization.
The goal of DCPI standardization is to drive out the inefficiencies and
error-prone complexity of one-time unique engineering – to transparent-
ly manage the routine business of IT physical infrastructure and create
that same signature quality expected of any infrastructure: it just works.
Unique engineering vs. standardized modular building blocks.
Unique one-time engineering
Good for art, bad for infrastructure
Standardized modular components
Changeable, scalable, repeatable, understandable,
integrated
The Case for Agile Data Centers

7. Business-wise, Future-drivenTM
Modularity – Making Your Data Center Agile
Schneider Electric 7
Data CentersStandardization + Configurability = Modularity
Deployment
SPEED
Ability
to
SCALE
Ability
to
RECONFIGURE
AGILITYAGILITY
STANDARDIZATION
MODULAR
Deployment
SPEED
Ability
to
SCALE
Ability
to
RECONFIGURE
AGILITYAGILITY
STANDARDIZATION
MODULAR
STANDARDIZATION
MODULAR
So, if standardization brings consistency and uniformity to a data
center, how can it be flexible enough for a constantly changing IT
environment? The key is modularity – pre-engineered, standardized
building blocks that can be configured as you wish. This is the essence
of agility in a modular data center – the ability to “plug and play”
components as needed, when needed.
The benefits of modularity affect every dimension of the data center’s
physical infrastructure: the way it occupies physical space, its
functionality, and its evolution over time – from initial design and
installation to reconfiguration at each refresh cycle. Bottom line? It makes
everything in data center design, installation and operation easier, faster
and cheaper.
So, what characteristics do modular designs have?
• Modular systems are scalable. Modular DCPI can be deployed at a level
that meets current IT needs, with the ability to add more later. This ability to
“right-size” can provide a significant reduction in total cost of ownership.
• Modular systems are changeable. Modular design provides great flexibility
in reconfiguring DCPI to meet changing IT requirements.
• Modular systems are portable. Self-contained components, standard
• interfaces, and understandable structure save time and money when
• modular systems are installed, upgraded, reconfigured, or moved.
• Modular components are swappable. Modules that fail can be easily
swapped out for upgrades or repair – often without system shutdown.

8. Business-wise, Future-drivenTM
Modularity – Making Your Data Center Agile
Schneider Electric 8
Data Centers
Reduced Error
One of the most understated business benefits of standardized modularity
is that it makes operating the data center – on the people side – so much
easier. Standardization, by nature, simplifies and facilitates learning at every
level. Equally important, it makes things predictable and repeatable, and
ultimately easier to explain, document, operate, troubleshoot and fix. Add
this all up and you’ve got fewer human errors, problems that can be
anticipated, an environment where knowledge is easily shared and
increased productivity.
We cannot emphasize enough the value of these benefits – to you, your
data center and your business. By far, the biggest and riskiest variable in
the data center is the human element. This concept is easy to understand
in theory, but really resonates most for those of you who get the calls in the
middle of the night when something goes wrong.
We won’t go into great detail here, but the benefits of standardization and
modularity don’t just apply to the physical infrastructure. They can be
applied to your operational program as well – the people and the process.
We see this at work in typical data center documentation, process and
procedures. But, also consider what standardized training, automation and
quality systems (QA, QC and QI) could do to make your data center more
available, agile and cost-effective.
The Human Aspect

9. Business-wise, Future-drivenTM
Modularity – Making Your Data Center Agile
Schneider Electric 9
Data Centers
Conclusion
In conclusion, modular data center design is the key to increasing
availability and agility while lowering total cost of ownership. Ultimate-
ly, that combination drives better business value in your data center(s).
To help your data center grow and adapt with your business today
and tomorrow, think standardized. Think modular. Think higher ROI.
For more information on
standardized, modular
design and business value,
check out our white paper,
“Standardization and
Modularity in Data Center
Physical Infrastructure”
Value
Availability Agility
TCO
Value
Availability Agility
TCO
Value
Availability Agility
TCO

10. Business-wise, Future-drivenTM
Modularity – Making Your Data Center Agile
Schneider Electric 10
Data Centers
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