Software for Data Center Infrastructure Management
Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software is a new class of software that gives data center operators the ability to run efficient data center operations and improve data center infrastructure planning and design. It typically replaces Excel, Visio, and home grown databases. DCIM software can bridge information across organizational domains – Data Center Ops, Facilities, and IT to maximize utilization of the data center.
Watch our DCIM Video “The 2 Min Drill”
Benefits of using DCIM:
Improve Uptime
Constantly monitoring critical facilities infrastructure, DCIM software polls equipment, collects, trends, and reports on data, and monitors for threshold violations. With built in alerting, you can react before failures impact users and services.
Improve Capacity Planning & Utilization
Quickly model and allocate space for new servers, racks, IT and facilities equipment. Manage relationships between IT equipment and critical facilities infrastructure in a few clicks with power and network connectivity diagrams.
Increase Data Center Energy Efficiency
Automatically collect data from Building feeds, IT loads, and non-IT loads for immediate calculation and trending of PUE across all your data centers to ensure corporate energy efficiency initiatives.
Improve People Productivity
Reservations, moves, adds, and changes are easily accomplished through fully integrated and automated workflow management. Process assurance, tracking and audit trails dramatically increase employee productivity and morale.
A new way to manage data center is here
Ad-hoc data center management tools may work for a specific point task but often these tools do not effectively work together to resolve common and often complex issues, such as figuring out where there is capacity to roll out new servers, finding stranded power capacity, or something as basic as having a clear understanding of what assets you have in a data center.
DCIM software provides data center operations managers with the ability to identify, locate, visualize, and manage all physical data center assets, quickly provision new equipment, and confidently plan capacity for future growth. DCIM tools can also help control energy costs, improve data center design, and increase operational efficiency.
Implementing a Data Center Infrastructure Management solution provides data center operations managers and their companies with significant operational and cost-saving benefits, today and into the future.
What are the Components of DCIM?
A DCIM solution provides accurate and meaningful information about your Data Center’s assets, resources used, and operational status – from the lowest level in the power chain to the highest level – in an integrated fashion.
A comprehensive DCIM solution is comprised of components that provide:
Enterprise Class Monitoring
Monitoring and data collection, thresholds, and alerts to accommodate tens of thousands of nodes across multiple data centers. This includes Intelligent Rack PDUs, Floor PDUs, Remote Power Panels (RPPs), Busways, UPS, CRACs, and environmental sensors. Plus, considerations for multiple protocols that exist including SNMP, ModBus, and BacNet.
Complete Asset Inventory Information
Inventory Information from racks, servers, storage, network equipment, including network connectivity, power chain, and applications. Complete critical infrastructure information plus the relationships between IT and Facilities equipment with mapping down to the physical port level between each device.
Multiple Ways to Visualize & Report on Data
Visualize data center asset information easily and quickly with the ability to drill down or up with a few clicks of the mouse. Information can be provided in a dashboard, trend charts, reports, floor layout plan, rack and row elevations, color coded status, with high resolution visio-like front and back equipment diagrams.
Change & Workflow Management
Built in processes to create systematic workflows to support modeling, planning, ticketing, work management, approvals, and auditing. Quickly and easily understand the status of all work items and changes across one or multiple data centers. Support multiple user roles and ensure highly productive staff and accurate DCIM database.
Power Chain and Physical Connectivity
Track all physical connectivity across the entire power chain and cable/data network. Built in rules automatically validate connectivity prior to provisioning of equipment. Simplify troubleshooting and maintenance and maps of physical relationships between floor PDUs, branch circuit panels, UPSs and CRAC units.
Comprehensive Models Library
A complete models library that is continually updated and provided, containing over 37,000 Smart Models, across 450+ manufacturers, including 13 categories of physical media, 10 protocols & 25+ network speeds, and 250+ com and power connectors.
Open and Compatible for Easy Integration
Integration Tools such as APIs that enable the integration between 3rd party CMDBs and ticketing systems.
A good DCIM architecture has the flexibility to adjust to user needs, makes it easy for the user to do their job, and has the right components necessary to solve real-world Data Center issues. It can leverage and integrate with existing data (e.g. CMDB, BMS), tools like service desk, help desk and ticketing systems, and reporting systems.
What Problems Does DCIM Solve?
DCIM software solves problems related to gathering information needed to enable Data Center Managers to effectively and efficiently manage the Data Center infrastructure.
An intelligent DCIM solution provides the ability to better manage assets, change and capacity. DCIM software also enables power monitoring, environmental monitoring and energy management. Specifically, DCIM enables Data Center Managers to get answers to these specific questions so they can make better and more informed decisions, quickly, and get their work done.
Benefits of using DCIM:
Asset Management
What do I have?
How is it configured and connected?
Where is it located?
Who owns it?
What’s the maintenance on it?
Capacity Management
How much do I have?
When do I run out?
How can I budget it?
Where can I put stuff?
How do I better utilize it?
Change Management
How do I manage moves, adds, deletes?
What is the impact?
Who does the work?
When is the work done?
How do I know it’s done?
Energy Management
How can I save energy?
What is the cost of it?
Who’s using it?
Who is meeting their saving goals?
What can I bill back?
Environmental Monitoring
How can I better manage hot spots?
Am I overcooling my data center?
Can I use free cooling?
How do I maintain a safe environment for IT equipment?
Power Monitoring
How much is being consumed?
How much is available?
How do I ensure uptime and reliability?
How can I accommodate high density?
Visualization
Can I navigate my data center in 3D as if I’m there?
Can rack elevations be automatically updated so I no longer need to update Visio?
How can I visualize power, temperature, and humidity sensor readings across my data center floor at a glance?
Security
How can I secure my data center against physical threats?
How can we control who has access to cabinets and cages?
How can we track and audit who was in a cabinet?
How can I restrict access to users or tenants through role-based permissions?
BI & Analytics
How can I easily analyze the information needed to make data-driven decisions?
How can I track KPIs most important to my organization?
How can I share my dashboards and reports with my management and team?
Connectivity
How are my assets connected to network, power, and storage?
How can I easily know physical port capacity?
How can I easily document structured cabling?
How can I visualize copper and fiber cabling and cable trays across my entire data center floor?
Without the information provided by DCIM, these questions become much more difficult to answer, and your Data Center more difficult and costly to manage.
What are the Benefits of DCIM?
The benefits of a DCIM solution can be found in time savings, people productivity, and cost savings. Employees no longer need to be on-site to identify what assets are in the data center and what space, power and cooling is available. Data Center Managers can have access to accurate data in real time at a click of a button. Understanding asset details and their physical power and network connections enables highly accurate capacity planning, down to the single port or 1 rack U level. Critical path capacity points are automatically and easily identified, reducing risks of failures. Reservations, moves, adds, and changes are accomplished with ease. Employee productivity and morale dramatically increases as processes and workflows are implemented to ensure high quality changes in the data center.
In his report, “Datacenter Infrastructure Management Software: Monitoring, Managing and Optimizing the Datacenter,” Andy Lawrence summed up the impact of DCIM by saying “We believe it is difficult to achieve the more advanced levels of datacenter maturity, or of datacenter effectiveness generally, without extensive use of DCIM software.”
Here are some specific examples of before and after DCIM software.
| Issue | Before DCIM | With DCIM |
|---|---|---|
| Asset ManagementWhat do I have in my data center?How is it connected?Who owns what? | Spreadsheets or Homegrown toolsNeed to physically go on site to determine space availability and positionInaccurate and incomplete records | Instantaneous visual and textual information on the equipment in the data center reduces troubleshooting timeNo need to send someone physically on site.Centralized database enables accurate record keeping and processes |
| Capacity ManagementHow much space, power, cooling, and connectivity do I have?Where is the best place to deploy new equipment?How do I manage my power chain? | Information contained within multiple systems with no way to integrate the data | Quickly model and allocate space for new servers, manage power and network connectivity in a single view or a few clicks |
| Change ManagementHow do I manage the work? Are there approval processes?Who does the work?How do I know the work is done correctly? | Delays in processing work ordersInability to ensure processes are followed | Fully integrated workflow management including automation of work orders and workflow activities for process assurance, tracking and auditing trails. |
| Power ManagementHow much is being consumed?How much is available?How do I ensure uptime and availability? | Proprietary monitoring systems or sneakernet to the data center to manually take readings | Constant monitoring with alerts before circuits failLocate stranded capacity to avoid costly build outs |
| Environment MonitoringHow can I better manage hot spots?Am I over-cooling my data center?How do I maintain a safe environment for IT equipment? | Wasted capacity due to inability to understand cooling requirementsOvercoolingUnknown hot spots | Identification of Hot Spots with thresholds and alertsKnow whether you are overcooling and wasting energy |
| Energy ManagementHow can I save energy?What is the cost of it?Who’s using it and who is meeting their saving goals? | Information contained within multiple systems with no way to integrate the data | Intelligent PUE analytics and reporting tools provide the capability for bill-backs and management decision making |
Take the Next Step with Sunbird. Try It Free.
DCIM Operations Demo
Remote 3D visualization of all your racks, assets, power, and network connections. View 100+ dashboard charts and reports. Know the capacity of all infrastructure items.
DCIM Monitoring Demo
Remotely monitor rack PDUs, UPSs, branch circuit meters, RPPs, floor PDUs, busways, cameras, door locks, and temperature, humidity, and other sensors. Remote central power control of all servers. Set thresholds, see trends, and get alerts.
Learn More with eBooks
Browse our library of eBooks to learn everything you need to know about DCIM including a buyer’s guide, budgeting tips, and how DCIM simplifies data center migration, cable management, KPI monitoring, and much more.