Managing Data Efficiency in Data Centers
24 Jan 2014, Sanjay Motwani - Sales Director, India & SEA, Raritan, DATAQUEST
Data center management is becoming more difficult, traditional tools and methods are just not enough for organizations to keep up with current job complexity and demands. Organizations have many challenges in ensuring that the company is getting all the requirement support in IT, and networking. Some of these challenges are opposites that require organization to improve services on one hand while reducing costs on the other. This is a task that on the surface would seem to be impossible to achieve, especially in the increasingly demanding environment of a data center. At a minimum just finding a reasonable balance between the following objectives is difficult enough.
TYPICAL PROBLEMS IN DATA CENTER MANAGEMENT
The data center operation manager requires an effective process system to manage capacity (space, power, and connections), assets and change; and then one needs a tool that will help them manage the difficulties in data center. Without an effective way to monitor and report energy, power, and critical environmental information, a tool becomes necessary to help organization to manage these functions. What is needed and is now available are the proper tools that will provide the visibility, control, and insight to better manage capacity and energy in an integrated way that will maximize data center efficiency.
INTEGRATED MANAGEMENT OF ORGANIZATIONS DATA CENTER OPERATIONS
Most day-to-day data center operational problems can be broken down into six key functional areas to manage; capacity, asset, change, energy, environment, and power. These functional areas have their own set of individual management problems and questions that IT managers deal with every day. With increased data center demands and complexity there is a growing need to better understand and manage the dependencies and relationships between these functions. It is not just enough to manage them individually but to manage them in an integrated way as part of a total solution approach. How you can better understand the impact and dependencies between asset, capacity, change, power, energy, and environment is becoming an increasingly important question.
So how an organization deals with these problems? What kind of methods, traditional tools, and processes are they using that sometimes require manual efforts which can lead to human error? Is an organization relying on spreadsheets as the most automated tools for data input and reporting? Or the organization has any way of capturing critical information and making the decisions and changes that optimize the data center performance?
The growing complexity of data centers only adds to the problem and arises to many such questions. Increased density in data centers makes it more critical to track assets, manage space, and ensure safety is maintained. The addition of new technologies with new capabilities creates more challenges with integration and compatibility. However, there are new areas of opportunity for organizations to drive data center improvements and new tools to exploit them.
A NEW WAY: DATA CENTER INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT (DCIM) SOFTWARE
Worldwide demand for new and more powerful IT-based applications, combined with the economic benefits of consolidation of physical assets, has led to an unprecedented expansion of data centers in both size and density. Limitations of space and power, along with the enormous complexity of managing a larger data center, have given rise to a new category of tools with integrated processes-Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM). Using spreadsheets has been an accepted way to track assets, but now, DCIM combines that capability with the added coordination of managing space, power, and cooling.
Once properly deployed, a comprehensive DCIM solution provides data center operations managers with clear visibility of all data center assets along with their connectivity and relationships to support infrastructure-networks, copper and fiber cable plants, power chains, and cooling systems. DCIM tools provide data center operations managers with the ability to identify, locate, visualize, and manage all physical data center assets, simply provision new equipment, and confidently plan capacity for future growth and/or consolidation. These tools can also help control energy costs and increase operational efficiency. Gartner predicts that DCIM tools will soon become the mainstream in data centers, growing from 1% penetration in 2010 to 60% in 2014.
6 KEY FUNCTIONAL AREAS TO BETTER MANAGE DATA EFFICIENCY IN DATA CENTER:
CONCLUSION
By concentrating and taking an extra effort towards the step that can help organization to increase the efficiency of data center, they need to be very strict in improving these six key areas to better manage their data centers. Also the timely action on the following aspects along with the key functional areas, the organizations can be rest assured about managing their organizations data center efficiency and address the difficulties involved in managing them.
- Control expenses
- Improve productivity
- Support new applications
- Provide reliable service
- Project future needs
TYPICAL PROBLEMS IN DATA CENTER MANAGEMENT
The data center operation manager requires an effective process system to manage capacity (space, power, and connections), assets and change; and then one needs a tool that will help them manage the difficulties in data center. Without an effective way to monitor and report energy, power, and critical environmental information, a tool becomes necessary to help organization to manage these functions. What is needed and is now available are the proper tools that will provide the visibility, control, and insight to better manage capacity and energy in an integrated way that will maximize data center efficiency.
INTEGRATED MANAGEMENT OF ORGANIZATIONS DATA CENTER OPERATIONS
Most day-to-day data center operational problems can be broken down into six key functional areas to manage; capacity, asset, change, energy, environment, and power. These functional areas have their own set of individual management problems and questions that IT managers deal with every day. With increased data center demands and complexity there is a growing need to better understand and manage the dependencies and relationships between these functions. It is not just enough to manage them individually but to manage them in an integrated way as part of a total solution approach. How you can better understand the impact and dependencies between asset, capacity, change, power, energy, and environment is becoming an increasingly important question.
So how an organization deals with these problems? What kind of methods, traditional tools, and processes are they using that sometimes require manual efforts which can lead to human error? Is an organization relying on spreadsheets as the most automated tools for data input and reporting? Or the organization has any way of capturing critical information and making the decisions and changes that optimize the data center performance?
The growing complexity of data centers only adds to the problem and arises to many such questions. Increased density in data centers makes it more critical to track assets, manage space, and ensure safety is maintained. The addition of new technologies with new capabilities creates more challenges with integration and compatibility. However, there are new areas of opportunity for organizations to drive data center improvements and new tools to exploit them.
A NEW WAY: DATA CENTER INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT (DCIM) SOFTWARE
Worldwide demand for new and more powerful IT-based applications, combined with the economic benefits of consolidation of physical assets, has led to an unprecedented expansion of data centers in both size and density. Limitations of space and power, along with the enormous complexity of managing a larger data center, have given rise to a new category of tools with integrated processes-Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM). Using spreadsheets has been an accepted way to track assets, but now, DCIM combines that capability with the added coordination of managing space, power, and cooling.
Once properly deployed, a comprehensive DCIM solution provides data center operations managers with clear visibility of all data center assets along with their connectivity and relationships to support infrastructure-networks, copper and fiber cable plants, power chains, and cooling systems. DCIM tools provide data center operations managers with the ability to identify, locate, visualize, and manage all physical data center assets, simply provision new equipment, and confidently plan capacity for future growth and/or consolidation. These tools can also help control energy costs and increase operational efficiency. Gartner predicts that DCIM tools will soon become the mainstream in data centers, growing from 1% penetration in 2010 to 60% in 2014.
6 KEY FUNCTIONAL AREAS TO BETTER MANAGE DATA EFFICIENCY IN DATA CENTER:
- Capacity Management: Capacity planning tools to determine requirements for future floor and rack space, power, cooling expansion, what-if analysis, and modeling
- Asset Management: Tools to capture and track assets, their details, relationships, and inter-dependencies
- Change Management: A process-driven structure with workflow procedures to ensure complete and accurate adds, changes, and moves
- Energy Management: Real-time data energy collection and integration with real-time monitoring systems to collect actual energy consumption to optimize capacity management
- Power Management: Real-time power data collection and integration with real-time monitoring systems to collect actual power usage to optimize capacity management
- Environmental Management: Real-time data collection and integration with real-time monitoring systems to collect actual environmental data to optimize capacity management
CONCLUSION
By concentrating and taking an extra effort towards the step that can help organization to increase the efficiency of data center, they need to be very strict in improving these six key areas to better manage their data centers. Also the timely action on the following aspects along with the key functional areas, the organizations can be rest assured about managing their organizations data center efficiency and address the difficulties involved in managing them.
- A Single Repository: One accurate, authoritative database to house all data from across all data centers and sites of all physical assets, including data center layout, with detailed data for IT, power and HVAC equipment and end-to-end network and power cable connections
- Visualization: Graphical visualization, tracking and management of all data center assets and their related physical and logical attributes-servers, structured cable plants, networks, power infrastructure, and cooling equipment
- Real-time Data Collection: Integration with real-time monitoring systems to collect actual power usage/environmental data to optimize capacity management, allowing review of real-time data vs assumptions around nameplate data
- Reporting: Simplified reporting to set operational goals, measure performance and drive improvement
- Holistic Approach: Bridge across organizational domains-facilities, networking and systems, filling all functional gaps; used by all data center domains data center infrastructure management software solutions offer data center managers and the management with a powerful new tool for dealing with their facilities, IT and network challenges today and in the future. As a data center manager deploying a DCIM solution they can position themselves and their organization to drive significant operational and cost-saving benefits to your company.
© Copyright © 2014. CyberMedia (I) Ltd All rights reserved.
