The costs associated with on-demand technology continue to increase. In order to manage the increasing costs, the complicated deployments and ensure uptime and reliability, managers of data center companies need to have access to information readily available. Some of the main challenges experienced by data center managers are highlighted here.
Managing Uptime and Availability
If you are using your own tools or spreadsheets to manage the server information, then you likely know that the information that is stored can be incomplete, inaccurate and outdated. This may be challenging when there is unexpected downtime that requires troubleshooting or when you attempt to map the actual power chain.
With DCIM solutions, you can have a single repository present for your asset information. This enables the accurate and consistent record keeping and will provide instantaneous textual and visual information in order to minimize the time that it takes to locate dependencies and assets, which will reduce the troubleshooting time.
Improving the Use of Capacity (Space, Cooling, Power)
When you have a dynamic data center it is virtually impossible to understand the amount of cooling, power and space that you have; to predict when you will run out; which server option is right for new services; and how much power is going to be needed to ensure availability and uptime.
With DCIM tools you can quickly allocate and model space, manage the power and the network connectivity, which are all key to discovering the hidden capacity while better managing the capacity that you have.
Managing Costs and Usage
The majority of data centers consume a large amount of energy in a wasteful manner. The majority of online companies will run their facilities at top capacity all day and night. The result is that data centers are wasting as much as 90 percent of the energy that they pull from the grid.
The good news is that there are solutions that will help managers to monitor the energy consumption, cycle the servers off during off hours and identify any candidates that may be able to be consolidated. Installing environmental sensors can also be beneficial in collecting information to safely raise the temperature in the data center.
Improvement of Staff Productivity
Manual and non-automated systems require the IT staff to spend much more time than they should logging information and activities into various spreadsheets. This is time that is taken away from strategic decisions that would improve the data center and improve the service offerings.
