High density IT equipment stresses the power density capability of modern data centers. Installation and unmanaged proliferation of this equipment can lead to unexpected problems with power and cooling infrastructure including overheating, overloads, and loss of redundancy. The ability to measure and predict power and cooling capability at the rack enclosure level is required to ensure predictable performance and optimize use of the physical infrastructure resource.

Data center physical infrastructure capacity management is defined as the action or process for ensuring power, cooling, and space is provided efficiently at the right time and in the right amount to support IT loads and processes. This paper discusses power and cooling capacity management only.