IO’s BASELAYER OS

Based out of Chandler, AZ, BASELAYER was spun out of IO in December of 2014. Currently, IO is the second largest private data center operator in the world. Prior to the new entity, BASELAYER OS was known as IO.OS – a data center management platform – and served more than 600 enterprises through IO’s colocation business.

Several of these named clients and enterprises using BASELAYER today include IO, Fortrust, Goldman Sachs, CentryLink, and SRP. Furthermore, IO uses the Service Provider edition of BASELAYER OS to extend to all clients located in IO’s facilities across the globe (over 2 million sq. ft. of data center space).

George and William Slessman founded BASELAYER OS, which has been a DCIM solution since 2011.

“BASELAYER’s product structure is built to allow users to layer in components to match their corporate goals,” says Samir A. Shah, vice president of product management. The graphic below shows the current and future state structure of our DCIM product. Our goal is to continue adding modules to our core services to unlock value at all levels of the IT stack.”

In working with creating a holistic data center management platform, BASELAYER enables several DCIM functions that include:

• “Single pane of glass” visibility – comprehensive view of both global data center activity as well as third party data feeds (including web services and big data analytics)
• Dynamic provisioning – programmatically matching application needs with data center capabilities
• Virtual sensors – visualize, control, track, and manage complex system performance
• Real-time PUE – view and graph PUE for an individual virtual machine, rack, module, or multiple data centers
• Business intelligence – real-time visibility of operational performance facilitates informed decision making and planning

As an example, using the visualizer module within BASELAYER, users can create custom dashboards to enable better business visibility. In the case below, a generator status dashboard shows real-time generator fuel levels in combination with forward-looking diesel pricing based on third-party web services feeds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Operators can use this dashboard to estimate not only when replacement is needed, but optimize their decision around when diesel fuel pricing is lowest.

“At BASELAYER, we simplify the data center and make it smart,” added Shah. “BASELAYER OS is the first complete data center operating system that integrates both modular and legacy data center infrastructure, enabling real-time visibility, control, simulation, optimization, and automation with users IT equipment, applications.”

BASELAYER DCIM Solution Details

IO is a global provider of software-defined data center infrastructure management solutions. The company was founded in 2007. With its global headquarters located in Arizona, U.S., and offices in Europe and Asia-Pacific, IO provides DCIM solutions to businesses across the world. IO offers an intelligent control platform that integrates business procedures across the data center and provides a single point of management. Here is a comprehensive evaluation of IO DCIM solutions.

Asset Management

The IO DCIM platform collects physical, virtual and logical data of entire assets and abstracts the data into a powerful management layer. There is proper coordination between the asset information and changes happening in the application stack. With a unified management platform, you can monitor and manage entire asset information across the data center and extended enterprise. You can group assets by location, users, zones or buildings.

Power Management

The IO.OS platform enables you to monitor and manage the power consumption details of space, power, cooling and IT from a single view. It presents real-time data of mechanical, power, cooling and electrical usage so that you can proactively resolve problems before they turn into critical issues. You can track power consumption details for a single device, user-defined group, zones or for the entire infrastructure. By visually mapping this data, you can quickly determine the total power usage and power capacity available at any point in time.

Thermal Management

The IO.OS platform seamlessly collects information from the entire environment, including sensors to provide continuous feedback to your team. It comes with a library of predefined functions to control valves and other equipment based on temperature, humidity and airflow values. When the predefined thresholds are met, the temperature can be automatically adjusted. IO.Analytics offers various dashboards to track and manage the efficiency of power, capacity and cooling modules. You can analyze key metrics of PUE trending, PUE comparative and power metrics.

Space Management

IO.Analytics is a web-based application that provides a visual mapping of the entire asset information within a data center. Using this visual aid, you can quickly identify where each device is located and how much capacity is in use. Simple drop-down menus allow you to compare single or multiple modules over a configurable time frame. By knowing the available capacity in real-time, you can add or relocate equipment on-the-go.

Visual Modeling

Visualizer, which comes with the IO.OS, displays custom graphics that represent the equipment in the entire data center, including PDUs, chillers, floor layout and generators. These visual drawings can be accessed through a browser, smartphone or a desktop. Once created, these visual drawings are linked to real-time data to provide infrastructure alerts and alarms, historical trend graphs, capacity warnings and trends and current status. IO.OS Immersant is a visual module that lets you virtually walk inside the data center and view the status in a first-person view. You no longer need to physically check the datacenter.

Hypothetical Modeling

The Visualizer and Immersant modules in the IO.OS provide you with a real-time representation of the data center. You can virtually move inside the data center and conveniently monitor and manage assets from a unified view. By looking at historical trends and current trends, you can determine the future requirements of power, space and cooling requirements of the data center. Before installing new equipment, you can hypothetically model it to see the effect of the change on the power, cooling and space capacity.

Access & Control

The IO DCIM platform can collect data from physical and virtual sensors and all other equipment, including SNMP-networked devices. It supports 150+ communication protocols, including Modbus and BACnet. The IO.OS Translator translates this information into OPC, the native language of IO.OS. You can configure the system to start or stop a process based on the data collected from the sensors. Real-time monitoring and alarm notifications are available. You can customize security settings to provide role-based security to manage user access. Using the power of HTML5, you can access the IO DCIM dashboard with your mobile device from anywhere, anytime.

Reporting & Alarming

With IO.Analytics, data trending is at your fingertips. You can use the reporting feature to create a wide array of reports. Key metrics can be visualized in graphs, pie charts or dials to help you quickly identify data center resource usage trends. You can create multiple representation layers based on a customer or a module. Reports can be created with a data range of up to 5 months back. It provides real-time alarm notifications for all critical data.