DATA CENTER INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT
Data centers are facilities that house physical servers and data storage devices while providing networking and connectivity to other servers across the world. These facilities are magnanimous, and consume large amounts of space, power, and energy. Data center operators across the globe face challenging situations with the maintenance of data centers. With complications in data center space and power growing with technology the task of maintaining data center is a huge hindrance to the success of the company owning the data center.
To overcome such obstacles, a new category of tools called the Data Center Infrastructure Management has been devised. It does not comprise the conventional and traditional methods of physical and network approach. In fact DCIM comprises modern and technologically advanced comprehensive solutions. It integrates information technology and facility management, and uses the combination of the two to monitor and manage a data centers physical and virtual assets. Basically, it is just the careful planning and more comprehensive way of visualizing all the resources within the data center.
DCIM provides data center technicians with a clear visibility of the data center assets and their relationship with the network. Their main role is to coordinate the networks with infrastructure like power, cooling, cables, fiber optics, cable chains, copper and fiber plants. It also gives a clear idea on consolidation, and future expansions and growth.
The successful deployment of DCIM requires sophisticated software and hardware. Over time, with the addition of new services, upgraded intelligence and automation capabilities are required to automatically tune itself to match the resources and networks. DCIM also contribute to the energy and power savings thereby increasing the operational efficiency.
DCIM identifies and eliminates sources of risk to increase operational availability. It is used to identify, eliminate or remove gaps between infrastructure and IT facilities to ensure continuity of functions seamlessly.
NEED FOR DCIM
- Increased power and heat density
- Cloud computing
- Virtualization
- Data center consolidation
- Energy efficiency
- Green data center initiatives
Energy efficiency can be reduced by alerting the data center manager about energy use, and deployment of energy saving operations within the facility. It has been estimated that DCIM enabled power saving operations are capable of reducing the total expenses of the data center by 20%. It can also be used to create a virtual facility which ultimately draws down natural air into the cooling systems of the servers. This in turn reduces cooling infrastructure costs.
DCIM software can also be used as a model to demonstrate the effectiveness of the software in achieving the green initiatives and adhering to the energy saving norms.
In 2010, analyst firm Gartner. Inc. issued a report on the state of DCIM implementations and speculated on future evolutions of the DCIM approach. According to the report, widespread adoption of DCIM over time will lead to the development of “intelligent capacity planning” solutions that support synchronized monitoring and management of both physical and virtual infrastructures.
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