Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) is a set of best practices that provide centralized management of data centers. With the right tools, data center operators can monitor the health of their systems and seamlessly manage equipment and cabling.
Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) is a set of best practices that provide centralized management of data centers. With the right tools, data center operators can monitor the health of their systems and seamlessly manage equipment and cabling. DCIM makes data center operations simpler and more flexible.
What is Data Center Infrastructure Management?
Data Center Infrastructure Management is the combination of IT and Operations to manage and optimize the performance of data center infrastructure within an organization. DCIM software tools help data center operators monitor, measure, and manage the utilization and energy consumption of data center-related equipment and facility infrastructure components.
DCIM helps improve the relationship between a data center building and its systems.
DCIM helps administrators identify and improve the relationship between a data center building and its IT systems.
DCIM tools were originally a component of Building Information Modeling (BIM) software, which data center operators use to create digital schematics of buildings. Most DCIM tools allow for printing of diagrams, a useful feature for maintenance or installing new equipment.
DCIM software enables data center operators to operate efficiently and improve infrastructure planning and design.
DCIM can bridge information across organizational domains (such as data center operations, facilities, and IT) to maximize data center utilization.
Data center operators can create flexible and efficient operations by visualizing the real-time temperature and humidity status, equipment status, power consumption, and air conditioning workload of the server room.
Why do we need data center infrastructure management?
DCIM’s tools and capabilities are most effective in data center asset management. Monitoring, reporting, visualization, predictive analytics, asset management, and other capabilities make DCIM a necessity for all data centers.
Monitoring: Ensuring that the temperature, power, or humidity in a data center is at acceptable levels is critical. DCIM’s real-time monitoring helps administrators by automatically monitoring and collecting this information.
Reporting: DCIM solutions are connected to multiple sensors that provide real-time data about the data center. This can make a difference when it comes to preventing potential disasters. The reporting allows operators to perform predictive analytics to ensure server room health.
Visualization: Visualization is like the eyes of the data center management system. It allows IT staff to quickly and accurately use critical data, reduce incident response errors and help staff execute the right policies.
Predictive analytics: DCIM software offers predictive analytics that can be used to map out potential scenarios. It helps administrators develop contingency plans in case of incidents in the data center and identify areas for improvement.
Asset Management: Asset management is the most important issue in any data center operation. DCIM tools help operators ensure proper utilization of assets within the facility and their functionality through monitoring and reporting. This ensures the reliability of data center equipment.
What are the benefits of DCIM?
DCIM tools offer many benefits to companies managing their data centers. DCIM benefits include increased productivity, uptime, energy efficiency and environmental impact, as well as reduced costs.
Improved productivity: DCIM capabilities provide accurate, real-time information to indicate any issues before they cause system failures. Integrated and automated workflow management improves productivity.
Improve uptime: DCIM software continuously monitors critical facility infrastructure with tools that poll devices, report data, and monitor for threshold violations. With built-in alerts, data center operators can react to outages before they impact users and services.
Improve energy efficiency: DCIM allows for the automated collection, trending, and reporting of data from both IT and non-IT loads in the data center. Information from all energy-related devices helps ensure energy efficiency initiatives for the enterprise.
Improved environmental impact: DCIM also has a positive impact on environmental issues by improving efficiency, such as cooling efforts, reducing resource waste, and managing energy. Integrated sensors in DCIM software help monitor airflow, temperature, and humidity to better allocate resources.
Reduced costs: The continuous flow of real-time information about all aspects of operations can pinpoint parts of a facility that are no longer needed. By reducing operational costs, DCIM helps reduce overall costs.
DCIM Tools Are Crucial
“It’s very difficult to achieve higher levels of data center maturity or data center effectiveness without widespread use of DCIM software,” said Andy Lawrence, author of Data Center Infrastructure Management Software: Monitor, Manage, and Optimize Your Data Center.
Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) tools have become an essential component of data centers by ensuring greater asset reliability and capacity, improved energy efficiency, lower environmental impact, increased security, and overall better connectivity.
DCIM tools are becoming a necessity in most data centers because managing complex computing operations, often with widely distributed network segments, quickly exceeds human processing capabilities.
According to Market Research Engine, the data center infrastructure management industry is expected to exceed $2.85 billion by 2024. DCIM is considered so important that ASHRAE has published a book titled “Advancing DCIM with IT Equipment Integration” as part of its Datacom series.