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October is National Energy Awareness Month here in the US. Although it was first decreed in 1991 to encourage government and private sector awareness of the importance of managing energy resources wisely, this year the matter seems all the more poignant for the data center industry at large. Consider the results of Data Center Efficiency Assessment report published this past summer:
“In 2013, U.S. data centers consumed an estimated 91 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity. This is the equivalent annual output of 34 large (500-megawatt) coal-fired power plants, enough electricity to power all the households in New York City twice over. Data center electricity consumption is projected to inc...
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Sunbird’s dcTrack® DCIM Operations software has won two American Business Awards for innovation and technical achievements.
Judged by more than 240 executives nationwide, Sunbird's DCIM software was presented with a Stevie® Award in the "Software - Asset Management Solution" category. Over 57,000 voters from the general public voted and awarded Sunbird with a "People’s Choice Stevie Award" in the same category.
What makes Sunbird’s DCIM Operations solution such an invaluable tool for so many data center operators? DCIM Operations provides real-time information about data center power, networks, and IT equipment making it easier for operators to provision new equipment, ensure optimal...
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Data center racks are becoming denser with IT equipment and a supporting infrastructure that consumes more power than ever before. When power was cheap, few companies gave any thought to how well they managed their power resources. But with electricity costs reaching historic highs, companies have had no choice but to investigate energy efficient technologies and practices that can help lower those costs, and keep them competitive in a tighter global market.
This is no easy task.
Even with so many data centers having successfully implemented consolidation and virtualization projects, new high performance computing racks often demand the same amount of power as before, or may have eve...
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Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) tools make it easy to instantly track all of your IT assets and have comprehensive information about them at your fingertips. But in order for this functionality to be effective, you need a way to import all of your devices’ information into a database, and ensure the accuracy of that information.
Most DCIM providers offer auto-discovery and import wizard tools in order to initially populate the database. But what happens when you need to add a new device on-the-fly, or correct an error in your database? A comprehensive models library can ease the burden on data center operators and ensure that new asset data is entered into the DCIM system qu...
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Conserving energy and lowering its usage are two of the most frequently dictated mandates for any Data Center Manager. There are a number of ways this is accomplished: server decommissioning/consolidation, high density computing, air containment systems, air-side economizers, and so on. One method that’s rarely discussed is the practice of completely shutting down servers during off-peak hours.
Shutting down servers is often overlooked as an energy saving practice because when servers are shut down abruptly, data and applications being run on those servers may become corrupted. But this shouldn’t deter anyone from employing graceful shutdown to power off servers, and here’s why: Studies...
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As a Data Center Operator, you may often find yourself balancing the need to conserve energy and reduce costs with the need to ensure proper environmental conditions for the IT assets within. But, relying on a room thermostat to monitor and set ambient temperature has been shown to be a massive waste of cooling resources, and ineffective at preventing hotspots. This has given rise to new data center environmental management technologies that some of the largest and most complex facilities have been using for years.
Sunbird’s Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) solution uses an integrated approach that relies on hardware and software to provide a complete picture of data center te...
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Dashboards are often used by businesses to give an at-a-glance view of the current status and historical trends of an organization’s key performance indicators (KPIs). This view is often in graphical format, enabling users to easily decipher the information for informed decision making.
A good DCIM solution provides users with the ability to easily review the state and performance of their data center from a single pane of glass. But what if you want to monitor more than one data center? Or have multiple slices of information that can be presented? Can you display more than one dashboard at a time?
With Sunbird’s dashboard, users can customize groups of charts and widgets in a single...
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Sunbird’s dcTrack® DCIM Operations Software has been nominated for the 2014 People’s Choice Stevie Awards for Favorite New Product! If you’re a satisfied DCIM customer, vote for dcTrack by visiting this link. Now, if you’re unfamiliar with Sunbird and dcTrack, you may be wondering what makes this DCIM solution, among so many solutions on the market, such a powerful resource for data center operators. Three reasons data center operators have had so much success with the tool are that it provides them with better capacity management and accurate asset management, and automates manual processes.
First, in a dynamic data center that is run through manual processes, it is almost impossible t...
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DCIM solutions need to seamlessly integrate with IT and facilities management systems to collect, maintain, and ensure the most accurate information. Accurate, up-to-date information regarding assets and their interdependencies is critical to the initial population and on-going management of your data center infrastructure. The scope of the data collection project depends on the amount of data that needs to be collected, and how easily that data can be gathered based on where it is currently stored.
Often the first step in obtaining this information is to use “auto-discovery”. Auto-discovery provides a way to automatically search and identify data center assets, IT and facility infrast...
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The Internet of Things (IoT) , the concept of virtually every gadget and appliance we own being interconnected via the Internet, continues to make great strides, and in the words of Gartner is “promising to transform the data center market.” If and when that transformation does take place, data centers will be faced with an overwhelming amount of data that will need to be synthesized, analyzed, and stored. That “big data” will push the need for additional storage, network, and computing resources to unprecedented heights.
As a data center operator, you may need to prepare for this shift sooner than expected. And that starts with a full understanding of how much capacity you actually hav...
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It’s that time of year again – hurricane season here in the US. And with that comes the potential for tropical storms, stronger than average winds, and power outages. If you’re a data center manager, here are a few things you should consider before one of these weather events hits:
Disaster recovery procedures. What redundancy procedures do you have on site? Do you have both redundant systems on site and a remote backup site? Although at times painful and costly, the costs of downtime often dwarf the costs of preparing for disasters, major or minor. Learn from your past and incorporate procedures ahead of time.
Active monitoring and alerting. Use Data Center Infrastructure Managem...
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Data center managers everywhere are being pushed to improve energy efficiency. But traditional approaches to power monitoring fall short because they fail to provide information about how much actual power devices are drawing, and whether cooling resources are being used efficiently.
The following are the top three ways to improve data center power monitoring, improve energy efficiency, and effectively utilize cooling resources.1. Implement Intelligent Power Distribution Units
Many data centers feed power directly from panels to blade servers. Although effective in distributing power, this approach is limiting in so much as it fails to provide information about the amount being drawn by the...
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You’ve outgrown your current facility and anticipate big-time IT infrastructure growth in the future. Although you considered expanding your current facility or creating new one, you may have determined that neither was cost-effective in your situation.
So instead, you’ve opted to move to a colocation facility. But, while moving to a colo may provide the additional space, flexibility, and capacity you’ll need, how can you continue to manage your infrastructure effectively and meet industry regulations without being physically present?
The key is selecting a Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) tool that offers you full visibility of your data center and the flexibility to co...
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The value propositions of an effective data center infrastructure management (DCIM) deployment are too great for any organization to ignore. DCIM can lead to massive energy savings and streamlined operations; both benefits amounting to lower operational expenses. Although these are goals that every organization strives to achieve, it’s not always clear who should take ownership over the project – IT or Facilities. So who really owns a DCIM project?
First, it’s important to note that while IT and facilities managers each have their own unique set of responsibilities, they also share several common objectives such as ensuring the availability of services, improving energy utilization,...
