DCIM for today’s data center challenges – and tomorrow’s
Bring a new level of resilience, security, and sustainability. DCIM software redefines hybrid IT infrastructure management.
What is data center infrastructure management (DCIM) software?
​
Data center infrastructure management (DCIM) tools monitor, measure, manage and/or control Data Center resources and energy consumption of both IT-related equipment (such as servers, storage and network switches) and facilities infrastructure components (such as power distribution units and computer room air conditioners). They are data-center-specific (designed for data center use), rather than general building management system tools, and are used to optimize data center power, cooling and physical space. Solutions do not have to be sensor-based, but they do have to be designed to accommodate real-time power and temperature/environmental monitoring. They must also support resource management, which it is defined as going beyond typical IT asset management to include the location and interrelationships between assets.
​
​
What Are The Main Components Of DCIM Software?
​
DCIM software generally falls into two main categories: monitoring/automation and planning/implementation.
The first category deals with monitoring and automation of the IT room and facility power, environmental control, and security. It helps ensure the data center is operating as designed and provides user-configurable thresholds for alarms on physical devices, including heat, ventilation and air conditioning. It also reports on real-time, average, and peak power use, and measures power usage effectiveness (PUE).
Planning and implementation software focuses on helping IT managers facilitate data center changes, deploy new equipment for peak efficiency, and track assets. It supports “what-if” scenarios to help with planning and reduce total cost of ownership.
​
​
What Are The Benefits Of DCIM — What Problems Does It Solve?
​
DCIM helps customers with four key pain points:
-
Preventing downtime
-
Lack of remote monitoring and management
-
Managing equipment from multiple vendors
-
Dealing with a large number of sites with limited or no IT staff
Next-generation DCIM, especially, can help with proactive incident management by enabling facility managers to gain insight into both the current and future state of their environments. For both local and distributed sites, they can get complete visibility and real-time recommendations on how to proactively handle any incident.
Our monitoring solution enables monitoring of critical physical infrastructure from multiple vendors. So, facility managers get centralized monitoring of all networked devices, including any configuration changes, from anywhere in the world.
It also enables managers to optimize performance by comparing the performance of their infrastructure with that of peers around the world, and get data-driven recommendations on how to improve.
Another component of next-generation DCIM solution, the operations module, provides additional benefits, including capacity optimization. It helps managers decide where to put additional servers and other IT equipment in terms of optimum operational efficiency from a power and cooling perspective.
The operations module also helps reduce downtime by analyzing the data center infrastructure and using simulations to highlight areas suffering from a lack of redundancy or capacity constraints.