Patent Document ID: 20180089042
Application ID: 15277731
Patent Flag: 0

Claim One:
1. A computer-implemented method to manage environmental conditions of a data center comprising: receiving, at a processor unit, sensor data from sensors monitoring environmental conditions at a data center, the data center housing operating hardware components that have not yet failed and receiving reliability data of the data center hardware components; and for each hardware component: deriving, at the processor unit, based on said received sensor data and reliability data, an estimated time to failure of the hardware component by running a model correlating a component reliability using learned patterns of component failure and environmental conditions that the hardware component has been subject to at said data center; determining, at the processor unit, whether said estimated time to failure of the hardware component exceeds an expected reference life criteria time t exp associated with that component, and for each hardware component having a derived estimated time to failure that does not exceed the expected reference life criteria time t exp for the respective component: computing, using the processor unit, a respective time for incurring a lowest cost to replace or repair the component; generating, using the processor unit, a candidate modification to one or more environmental conditions of said data center, wherein said candidate modification to said one or more environment conditions minimizes energy usage of operations at the data center and extends a life of the respective component while operating under said modified environmental conditions at said data center to its respective lowest cost time to replace; computing, using the processor unit, an energy cost impact by letting the respective component operate under said candidate modified environment condition at said data; and after generating candidate modified environment condition associated with each hardware component: selecting, using the processor unit, an environmental condition modification from said generated candidate modified environment conditions, said selected environmental condition modification corresponding to a respective hardware component having a largest computed energy savings impact and ensures that a new derived estimated time to failure of each remaining hardware component exceeds its respective said expected reference life criteria time if operating under the selected modification environment condition; generating, using the processor unit, an output signal for use in modifying said data center environment according to said selected environment condition modification; modifying said data center environment according to said selected environment condition modification, and scheduling a replacement of the hardware component in the data center based on said computed lowest cost time to replace or repair.