There are so many new kinds of demands around the modern data center that it’s a bit hard to keep up with so much expansion. New workloads, applications, and even devices are connecting and requesting data center resources.
It's important to understand that the data center is a shared resource that needs a shared management approach. Yet IT and facilities often rely on disjointed tools, data and processes, which fragments rather than unites data center management. This not only hampers day-to-day operations but also disrupts ongoing planning and optimization.
Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) helps IT and facilities escape their silos and take a more integrated approach. It transcends disparate protocols, multiple data points and a wide range of performance metrics to unify and simplify every facet of the data center—starting with the physical infrastructure.
To help organizations plan their DCIM roadmap, this paper from CA explores five essential DCIM use cases and outcomes. From better asset utilization and faster provisioning to maintaining availability, greater efficiency and smarter capacity planning, we look at how DCIM can close the operational and optimization gap for both IT and facilities.
These use cases include:
- Asset Management - Can inventory, maintenance, warranty and financial information be recorded for both IT and facility hardware assets?
- Provisioning - Can the solution provide device auto-placement as well as connecting power, network, and storage ports?
- Availability - Does the solution enable integration with other IT management systems such as incident management, service desk, workload automation, and change management?
- Energy Efficiency - Can metrics such as PUE, DCiE, SI-EER and others be calculated out-of-the-box, and does the solution also allow you to easily create custom metrics?
- Capacity Planning - Does the solution provide advanced predictive analysis to better understand capacity utilization and to reallocate and consolidate resources as needed?
As 451 Research states: “The best-run data centers are those where managers have accurate and meaningful information about their data center’s assets, resource use and operational status—from the lowest level of the facility infrastructure to the higher echelons of the IT stack. This information enables them to plan, forecast and manage; to make decisions based on real-time data; and to use automated systems with confidence.”
Download this whitepaper today to learn how with the right DCIM solution, organizations will be able to tap into ongoing efficiency and financial savings. Engineers will no longer inadvertently compromise power capacity that may impact revenue generation. And your staff will not unnecessarily recommend investment in additional power and cooling resources and even new facilities, since they will now know if there is existing untapped capacity.
With a DCIM solution, your entire IT staff will continue to bridge the operational and optimization divide in their data center.
