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Amod Ranade, Schneider Electric, IT Business throws light on the need of comprehensive and converged data center and the visibility that DCIM (Data center infrastructure management) can bring in.
How can Items deliver a comprehensive, converged data center and IT management platform?
IT decision makers need to focus on both the facility infrastructure as well as the IT infrastructure to create the converged data center for the future. IT equipment is being developed with the capability to draw “on-demand” power and cooling. Unless the facility infrastructure has visibility to the changes on the IT side, it becomes challenging to ensure an efficient infrastructure performance.
"DCIM software enables a business to respond more quickly to market demands, support cost-saving and energy- efficient approaches"
Data center infrastructure management is the new approach to managing data center facilities and IT infrastructure. DCIM software provides total visibility into all of your data center’s processes. StruxureWare for Data Centers (the DCIM platform from Schneider Electric) is taking this a step further; integrating DCIM with DCFM (data center facility management). Think of it like a crystal ball for your data center — an all seeing eye that can see a UPS battery expire from a mile away. Instead of guesswork, you can know exactly how to optimize your data center.
Using DCIM in your data center is like maintaining optimum gas mileage in your car, whenever you drive it. DCIM can huge ensure energy savings from well-managed data centers which can reduce operating expenses by 20%.
The business case for DCIM boils down to three factors
Balancing availability with efficiency: Increasing IT complexities and higher densities threaten uptime, yet ensuring redundancy requires extra power. DCIM monitors your data center 24/7 for availability threats and efficiency opportunities.
Bridge the gap between IT and facilities: In traditional data centers, the IT guys know all about their servers, facility folks understand how much energy is needed to run them, but there is little coordination between the two. DCIM allows a holistic view of the entire data center
Keep pace with ever-changing IT demands: The world of IT is changing, and keeping up means staying competitive. New technologies and trends are going to put your data center to the test, in terms of both availability and efficiency
How can customers be able to link physical infrastructure assets to business processes for improved holistic business impact analysis
Schneider Electric’s StruxureWare platform makes the physical infrastructure information visible on the IP layer. Leveraging the web services architecture, it enables seamless sharing of data points amongst various modules of the StruxureWare platform. With the APIs available, this can be further extended into business processes as well.
What is the holistic approach to managing IT business process assets and workloads?
Despite the much higher level of automation found in today’s DCIM systems, ongoing process and action from operators is still required to make the whole system work and be effective. Assets need to be accurately documented in the system and maintained over time. The system needs to be configured with the appropriate settings and thresholds based on operating requirements. Alarms need to be incorporated into an issue resolution process.
At a fundamental level, making all of this happen requires:
Agreement between facilities, IT, and management on operating parameters, metrics, and goals for the data center power and cooling systems and their management
A review of existing processes and comparison to DCIM requirements (Can DCIM related processes be incorporated into existing practices or are new ones required?)
New processes should be formally defined (who, what, when, where), resources committed and specific owners assigned.
How to enable IT service providers to instantly data center, as well as the operational costs associated with these changes?
StruxureWare Data Center Operation enables vendor-agnostic inventory management with real-time device failures and data shown within your data center physical layout, as well as recommendations on how to resolve issues. A location- based drill-down view provides a structured overview of data center locations, from a global to local view down to single assets.
The Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) calculator supplies information on daily utilization of energy. For instant updates on the go Data Center Operation, mobile provides access to StruxureWare Data Center Operation information via handheld. StruxureWare Data Center Operation is available as anEnterpriseor a Co-location base application. The Co-location application provides additional space and cage management, integrated tenant billing and reporting capabilities
How to provide in-depth visibility, reporting and analysis of data center infrastructure as well as the facility and the building in which the data center resides?
Facility infrastructure management tools traditionally used very different communication protocols. The IT management tools on the other hand used IP based protocols. In depth reporting and analysis requires both these data points to be combined.
StruxureWare for Data Centers from Schneider Electric achieve this due to web services architecture that allows Schneider Electric to integrate its industry leading software and tools for the facility infrastructure to integrate and share data points with its industry leading DCIM solution.
How to leverage DCIM technology as an ideal component in Items data center strategy?
Today’s data centers no longer are just cost centers. Instead, they can contribute significantly to overall business value. DCIM software enables the business to respond more quickly to market demands, support cost-saving and energy- efficient approaches — such as virtualization and unified computing — and streamline operational processes.
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