A DCIM Primer

What you need to know

 

CIOs who have their ear to the ground know that the right DCIM software can become a powerful tool for today’s data centers. There’s little doubt that these increasingly complex enterprises face huge challenges in maintaining and improving key deliverables to clients. Pressures from outside and from within are forcing data centers to become more efficient in space and power consumption, in profitability, and in ensuring security in the face of cyber threats.   

 

Situational Awareness to Fully Exploit Resources

 

The right DCIM can provide the situational awareness data centers need to run efficiently, to inventory and employ facilities, hardware, tools, software, and personnel in the most effective manner. No longer do centers have to be saddled with underutilized hardware and software resources (e.g. “zombie” servers). DCIM can provide the much-needed metrics for budgeting, service planning, and compliance audits. With increased situational awareness comes the agility to move with fluctuating business climates, a critically important factor in enhancing availability, reliability, overall quality and serviceability.

 

 

But many data centers increasingly find themselves in quicksand when it comes to updating their management systems, tools, and best practices. For whatever reason, they’re simply unable to plan, economically run or perform much-needed data analyses to improve workflow. 

 

Situational awareness allows CIOs to clearly identify their resources and the way they’re configured and employed. It reveals a data center’s availability (and vulnerability) when it comes to performance, capacity and cost-effectiveness in providing reliable service. 

 

Michael L. Ross, a data center management consultant who has over 10 years helping large data centers reduce their total cost of ownership underscores the importance of management tools like Tuangru’s RAMP DCIM in providing situational awareness.

 

“Ten years ago, data centers were focused on availability and performance. Today, data centers need to understand the total cost of ownership and its elements to deliver a service. You need to manage the cost of the data center plus the infrastructure supporting it as well as maintain high operating efficiencies,” he said