Schneider research examines AI data centre maintenance
Author: Joe Peck
Global energy technology company Schneider Electric has published new research examining the role of condition-based maintenance (CBM) in supporting AI-era data centres.
The IDC whitepaper, The Self-Aware Datacenter: How Condition-Based Maintenance Turns Fragmented, Multi-Vendor Datacenters into Predictable Infrastructure and System Intelligence, explores how increasing rack densities, multi-vendor environments, and shortages of skilled technicians are influencing maintenance strategies.
According to the report, traditional, calendar-based maintenance is becoming less effective as data centre infrastructure becomes more complex. Instead, it highlights condition-based maintenance, which uses continuous monitoring and predictive analytics to identify potential equipment issues before failures occur.
Jerome Soltani, Global Head of Services at Schneider Electric, says, “By combining remote monitoring capabilities with AI-assisted orchestration, you can gain insights regarding the health of your assets and systems, and get an early identification of abnormal behaviour that might precipitate a failure.
“This ensures that downtime is minimised, but also that equipment that is working within specification is not disturbed or needlessly addressed.”
Research highlights growing operational challenges
The whitepaper states that AI deployments are increasing rack power densities well beyond those typically found in conventional data centres, while mergers, acquisitions, and brownfield developments are creating more complex, multi-vendor environments.
It also highlights the shortage of skilled engineers as a growing operational challenge, citing research indicating that demand for qualified personnel continues to outpace supply in many markets.
According to IDC, organisations adopting AI-assisted CBM have reported reductions in manual interventions, operational expenditure, and unplanned downtime, alongside improvements in asset lifespan and operational efficiency.
Luis Fernandes, Senior Research Manager at IDC and author of the whitepaper, explains, “Condition-based maintenance is an optimised operating model for AI-era infrastructure that reduces manual interventions, lowers OpEx, and extends asset lifecycle.
“By scaling predictive analytics to correlate behaviour across every vendor, asset, and failure trajectory, CBM enables operators to build machine-driven, human-validated system intelligence.”
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