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As with any technology investment, a business owner should examine the return on investment (ROI) before making a purchasing decision on a Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) solution. There are innumerable white papers and articles that point to the fact that DCIM – a solution that helps to address the infrastructure management needs of the data center - has a remarkable ROI. When a DCIM solution is properly implemented and managed, it saves hundreds of man-hours and helps maintain high availability, both of which increase business profits.
However, it is important for data center operators to understand that DCIM will not fully transform a data center overnight. It takes time,...
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Datacenters.com recently published a post on the 2015 top five data center trends which includes perspectives on industry trends in: cloud, virtualization, automation, the Internet of things (IoT), and physical size. Here, we will consider how a data center infrastructure management (DCIM) tool can help you to mitigate any potential disruptions while taking advantage of emerging frameworks that improve operational efficiency and help to increase your organization’s bottom-line.
First, what does the move to the cloud mean for your data center? According to the article, “the cloud is growing rapidly and is quickly evolving into a standard in every IT organization. In fact, cloud data cente...
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You know those servers that you have out in your data center, powered up but doing nothing, what do you do with them? While you can simply just let them continue running in your data center, they can actually be costing you more than you think. Consider that a typical five year old server, which may not be energy star compliant could consume 175 watts at idle. And if 10% of the servers in a 1000 server data center are ghost servers and electricity costs $0.15/kwh, we are talking about $23,000 of un-necessary expense. AND this is just for the server, never-mind the cooling expense. So what do you do? Do you take the risk and power them down, decommission them, and deal with potential s...
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For the fifth consecutive year, Sunbird was recognized in The Channel Company’s CRN Data Center 100 list for cutting-edge technologies that power, support and protect today’s data centers. The list features leading technology vendors whose solutions are vital to today’s data centers.
Sunbird - as one of the first to introduce DCIM solutions and create the intelligent rack power distribution unit (iPDU) category - was selected for its innovative solutions that solve critical data center issues, such as reducing power and cooling costs, finding infrastructure capacity, managing assets and monitoring performance.
Selected by the CRN editorial staff after months of in‐depth research and nom...
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According to the 451 Group, “A data center infrastructure management (DCIM) system collects and manages information about a data center’s assets, resource use and operational status.” When that information is provided in meaningful way, IT and facilities management’s decision making is vastly improved, which allows for better short-term management, and long-term planning and investments.
Consider for a moment what happens when data center operators are forced to rely on homegrown solutions like Visio and Excel spreadsheets. Due to the effort required to maintain them, static spreadsheets are often outdated and missing critical information that can only be found in an all-encompassing, a...
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Information Technology is so fundamental to every business today that every organization needs to establish formal processes to ensure that IT services are continually aligned to the business, and deliver efficient and reliable support over the entire lifecycle of products and services. These processes, commonly classified as IT Service Management (ITSM), may follow a well-known model such as ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) or, more likely, a set of internally-developed best practices.
Regardless of the chosen approach, it will typically include a database that defines the current overall IT function status accompanied by a set of ITSM processes with well- defined steps and workflow rule...
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Traditionally, systems for monitoring and managing IT devices and facility objects have existed as separate entities. But, as the data center power chain has grown larger and more interdependent, operators have begun to embrace the need for an intelligent unified management tool that can bridge the gap between IT and facilities in order to effectively manage numerous data center subsystems, improve efficiencies, and maintain availability.
Being able to gather information from IT assets like servers, network switches, and rack PDUs, as well as from facilities objects like CRACs, UPS, and RPPs, provides data center operators with far more accurate and complete views of data center events. ...
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In IDC’s latest study—“IDC MarketScape: Asia/Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) Datacenter Infrastructure Management Solution 2014 Vendor Assessment”— Sunbird was positioned prominently in the “Major Players” category and portrayed as having one of the largest DCIM market footprints in the region.
This new study is designed to help IT buyers compare vendors’ current capabilities and strategies relative to one another and to the factors that IDC believes will be most conducive to future success in the DCIM market.
According to the IDC report, “Sunbird has defined itself in the DCIM market by providing an open, robust solution for midsize enterprise data centers. It has a strong focus on AP...
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As a data center manager in a colocation provider facility you are tasked with not only monitoring the health of your data center infrastructure, but providing outstanding service to your customers. Whether your customer is internal – such as your management team, or external – such as those you provide space for, you need tools that can provide for scalability, flexibility, and accountability of your data center assets and information within. These were the objectives that Exponential-e, the leading U.K. provider of networking and cloud services, had in mind when they decided to offer a Tier III data center and expand their colocation offerings.
With the new 71,500-squarefoot (1,625m2)...
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Often the best lessons learned are from those that have experience. Listen and learn as British Airways and Comcast, two companies that have successfully deployed DCIM, discuss the benefits they have received from their DCIM implementations.
In this hour long webinar, Keith Bott, Comcast, and Micah Petty, British Airways, spoke with Jennifer Koppy, IDC Research Director, and provided valuable insight into lessons learned, pitfalls to avoid, and gave viewers tips on how to be successful with a DCIM deployment.
As many data center managers are tasked to do more with less, and deliver services faster and more economically, improving the management of data center resources becomes a critic...
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Carbon Footprint measurement has become a measurement shared among nations, companies and individuals to compare the results of their Sustainability practices. Methane and Carbon Dioxide are naturally occurring Greenhouse gases which help maintain a temperature on earth that is habitable. Small changes in Carbon Dioxide or CO2, concentrations have large effects on the Earth’s climate. Thus, this is the measurement that most companies tend to keep watch of. Measurement of CO2 within a facility is also an important measurement of Indoor Air Quality. To measure your CO2 within a facility, you will need to use the Electricity specific emission factor for your part of the world. For example...
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Wednesday, November 12, at 11 am EST
How British Airways and Comcast, two of the largest companies in the world, successfully deploy DCIM in their data centers; and, what are they doing to get the most from DCIM?
Find out as IDC’s Jennifer Koppy leads a revealing hour-long webinar that will uncover the most important lessons learned and pitfalls to avoid -- information useful to data centers of all sizes.
Register here and learn how DCIM can help you and your data center today.
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In order to meet ISO 14001, we must first understand what it is. ISO, or International Organization for Standardization, is a non-government organization with over 150 member countries. The purpose of this organization is to establish an internationally created set of rules for companies to follow to achieve better products, reduce waste and increase productivity. For ISO 14001, it is the environment we are concerned about. In striving to be good corporate citizens, companies put sustainability practices into play at their place of work.
Sustainability is comprised of 3 pillars known as environment, social equity and economics. ISO 14001 helps achieve the pillars of Sustainability.
I...
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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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