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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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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...
