By Nathan Weiss, IDMWORKS
Last week I was interviewed by a reporter from SearchITChannel.com about why IDMWORKS is having success with DCIM solutions in small to midsized data centers (20-100 cabinets). Although there are a multitude of benefits associated with implementing a DCIM solution, most (DCIM) companies are focusing solely on the enterprise market. Until recently that has been a major disadvantage for organizations in the small to mid size space that have some of the same needs, just on a smaller scale. DCIM solutions as a planning tool can provide a real world proof of concept that will give clients the confidence to implement and utilize a DCIM solution for their Data Center Infrastructure Management needs. SME and Enterprise clients should both benefit from the value these solutions can provide when integrated with migration or consolidation projects.
IDMWorks’ Data Center Migration team is certified by several of the industry leading DCIM solution providers. We have put our time and experience tested twist on how we deliver our services and how we believe DCIM solutions should be positioned in the data center space.
The Data Center Migration team specializes in migration planning. The evolution of our process has taken us from homegrown proprietary tools to the use of DCIM solutions during our engagements that provide strong benefits and features than we could not have offered years ago. Traditional methods would have the client going back to documenting their hardware and application inventories and circuit and connectivity in spreadsheets, Visio and CAD. The reality is once clients see the value that the DCIM solutions provide, and have worked with the product throughout a migration, the thought of going back to the old way of managing their the environment is not appealing. Additionally we do not utilize the typical auto-discovery features built into the DCIM solutions we work with as we have found there is much greater value derived in the manual process we deploy (basically the auto-mated processes give customers the bare minimum or less needed to have a successful engagement), and that most clients are reluctant to allow these applications to perform their auto-discovery functions on their networks (as to do so violates many tried and true network IT security principles).
No matter what the size of your organization is there are quantifiable benefits from utilizing DCIM solutions for planning, modeling, and scheduling an efficient equipment migration. Once the migration is complete, our team can install a fully populated DCIM solution for a client to use.
Data center operating costs have skyrocketed in the past years with a major contributor being the power bill. Gartner recently estimated that 12 percent of data center operating costs are spent on power, and this cost increases by 20 percent annually. In addition to the higher cost of operations, power poses other major challenges in terms of size, capacity and utilization constraints. The Uptime Institute recently reported that more than a third (36 percent) of data center facilities will run out of space, power and/or cooling in 2011 or 2012. Only a fraction of organizations have the resources to plan and build new data centers while most will have to resort to strategies such as consolidations, virtualizations, hardware upgrade and other means to meet growing demands and increase the lifeline of their data centers. In recent years, data center infrastructure management (DCIM) has become an essential solution for data centers in their effort to implement these strategies and help deal with their space, power and management challenges.
How DCIM supports the business
DCIM helps data centers identify and determine whether all the hardware assets are needed to meet the business objectives, while at the same time profiling assets to power usage, cooling requirements, applications running, utilization levels and so on. By providing full analysis of the data center, organizations can report back to management “what if” scenarios on how every move, add or change initiative will affect the status of the data center and properly forecast future improvements to the IT infrastructure.
DCIM enables organizations to systematically control and manage their data centers and help redirect wasted IT budget toward investments that support the core business objectives. Uncontrolled and unmanaged data centers end up wasting the IT budget on counter-productive, time-wasting activities – perpetual firefighting issues.
The ability to visualize, analyze and predict the performance of the data center is among the strongest features of DCIM. This predictive analysis enables the data center operator to examine various and competing concepts before committing to any changes. Moreover, if DCIM is used to analyze the present status and predict the performance of any future changes, then a focus on cooling should be at the epicenter of these efforts.
Sources:
Gartner, The Benefits of CFD Analysis in Designing and Running Modern Data Centers, 1 March 2011.
Information Week, Data Centers Face Growth Challenges, 20 March 2011.
Excerpt from The DCIM Advisory feature article by Kamran Fouladi and Soheil “Sam” Negahbani, Energex Technologies. Check back later for more on this feature.
We are excited to announce that nlyte Software has been named a ‘Cool Vendor’ by leading analyst firm, Gartner. The report, written by Jay E. Pultz, Jeffrey Hewitt, David J. Cappuccio and Rakesh Kumar of Gartner, Inc., affirms the benefits that data center infrastructure management (DCIM) has on the growing challenges within the data center in regards to power, space, cooling and network availability.
According to Gartner, “Data center managers recognize that power and cooling represent major challenges — but, as yet, most do not have a good grasp on the severity of their problems or their effective management.” They recommend companies “evaluate and pilot test DCIM tools and implement DCIM in the highest power density areas of your data center.” Gartner went on to say, “DCIM is likely to be ‘self-funding’ – the cost of tools is likely to be offset by the savings in power costs that DCIM helps enable.”
According to Gartner on the nlyte suite “development work was initially done by data center professionals, an IT approach that can be seen in the way the product works across the entire suite.” The nlyte DCIM solution provides 3D data models, auto-discovery of data center assets, intelligent capacity planning and advanced integrated analytics resulting in the most efficient use of power, cooling and space through the optimal placement of data center assets. The nlyte DCIM suite automatically discovers IT assets, lets you visualize the physical infrastructure, model the Move, Add, Change (MAC) initiatives across your data center estate, control data center processes and personnel, report on progress and predict capacity resources well into the future. All this enables a more efficient, cost-effective and greener data center environment.
Gartner defines a cool vendor as a company that offers technologies or solutions that are: Innovative, enable users to do things they couldn’t do before; Impactful, have, or will have, business impact (not just technology for the sake of technology); Intriguing, have caught Gartner’s interest or curiosity in approximately the past six months.Click here to view the press release.
What is Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM)? DCIM is a relatively new term that can mean different things to different people and vendors. Some first generation DCIM vendors provide monitoring of infrastructure data, 2D data models and basic energy management and reporting. A complete DCIM solution provides 3D data models, auto-discovery of data center assets, intelligent capacity planning and advanced integrated analytics. In preparation for the Uptime Institute Symposium in May, Matt Stansberry interviewed Andy Lawrence, Research Director of Eco-Efficient IT at The 451 Group and Program Director of Uptime Symposium, on what DCIM really means. Watch the video below.
(click here if you are unable to view)
Andy presented on DCIM at the Uptime Institute Symposium May 9-12, 2011 in Santa Clara, Calif.
Now that we have returned from the Gartner Data Center Conference in Las Vegas, I wanted to refresh your memory on one of the key topics discussed throughout the conference. Many key analysts emphasized that the time is now to begin implementing a solution to manage your data center’s power, cooling and space.
In the keynote address by Dave Cappuccio, Crucial Trends You Need to Watch, his number 3 trend was “energy efficiency and monitoring.” He noted that data centers are now consuming 40 to 100 times more energy than the offices they support. In a greening society, this statistic is unacceptable. Today, 68% of data center managers still don’t measure PUE, 25% never measure power usage at all and those that do, measure it infrequently. Only 3% of data center managers have implemented any type of energy management software thus far.
With the arrival of data center infrastructure management (DCIM) solutions, data center managers can now find ways to optimize their performance. Cappuccio continued saying that, by 2012, monitoring and reporting on energy consumption will be required. In a later session focusing on DCIM, Gartner analyst, Jay Pultz explains, “by monitoring and measuring energy consumption, DCIM informs the data center manager of where and how power is being utilized enabling the manager to evaluate options to improve and control its use.” DCIM goes beyond the macro model by providing greater insight on energy consumption within the data center. The data center manager can use to solution to pinpoint problem areas by intelligent capacity planning and modeling the future effects from projected moves, adds and changes — either for retrofitting existing data centers or in building new ones.
Pultz expects that data center facilities projects will once again top their polls in terms of funding levels. The easiest way to get started with DCIM is to earmark some of those funds. Pultz continues believing that most will find that this investment is self-funding; that is, the efficiencies gained in the project by adopting DCIM more than pay for DCIM!
As a final note on energy management and DCIM, Gartner believes that “DCIM will become the next must have for data center managers.”
To learn more about DCIM subscribe to The DCIM Advisory.
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