The various embodiments described herein relate to systems and methods, circuits and devices for providing data center cooling while optimizing power usage effectiveness and/or compute power efficiency of the data center. The various embodiments can provide optimized thermal performance and can reduce power consumption of the data center by strategically locating sensor modules, preferably microsystems with MEMS technology, in the data center and using a processing circuit to acquire data from the sensors and to generate a control law for operating the air conditioning system efficiently. In particular the sensors are operable to measure and provide granular environmental data to further characterize the environmental conditions of the racks locally, and the data center as a whole. The processing circuit may also generate a profile of local racks and simulate a data center environment to develop and test control strategies for implementation in the actual data center.