-
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...
-
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...
-
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...
-
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,...
-
California’s Title 24 2013 energy efficiency standards will go into effect on July, 1 2014. Prior to 2013 California data centers were considered exempt from Title 24, but that’s no longer the case as most data centers will now require:
Economizers in small computer rooms in buildings that have economizers
Prohibiting reheat in computer rooms
Prohibiting non-adiabatic humidification in computer rooms
Limiting power of fan systems serving computer rooms to 27 watts/kBtuh of net sensible cooling capacity
Variable speed controls on all chilled water fan systems and all direct expansion (DX) systems over 5 tons serving computer rooms.
Containment in large, high density data cen...
-
On Wednesday, April 30th, 9:15 to 10:15am at Data Center World in Las Vegas, Nevada, Joseph Keena, Manager of Data Center Operations for University of Florida Health will join with James Cerwinski, Director of Software for Sunbird, in an information session on how to justify the initial cost of a DCIM solution to management as well as other data center stakeholders.
The presenters will discuss how today’s complex data center infrastructure challenges can no longer be addressed with Viso, spreadsheets, and home-grown databases; and how the maturation of DCIM software solutions over the past few years, make them the foundation of effective infrastructure management.
By the end of the sessi...
-
The demand for new on-demand technology services and the cost of deploying and managing them continue to skyrocket. In order to manage deepening costs, complex deployments, and ensure reliability and uptime, data center managers need access to information and data that isn’t always readily available. These are the top five challenges data center managers face and how a Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) solution can address those challenges.
Challenge 1: Maintaining Availability and Uptime
If you’re using spreadsheets or homegrown tools to manage your server information, you probably already know the information stored can be outdated, inaccurate, or incomplete. This can prov...
-
Improving energy efficiency has continually challenged data center managers over the past decade. At the heart of the matter lies the ongoing debate as to what exactly is the best metric or combination of metrics by which to monitor performance and make improvements.
Up until now Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) has been the most common metric used. However, PUE has inherent limitations that the industry has attempted to overcome by introducing new metrics such as Green Energy Coefficient (GEC), Energy Reuse Factor (ERF), and Carbon Usage Effectiveness (CUE).
The new Data Center Energy Productivity (DCeP) metric is an attempt to offer a more complete measure of data center efficiency. ...
-
We’re excited to announce that the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), has named Sunbird a finalist for the 2014 CODiE Award for Best Asset Management for its DCIM operations software dcTrack®.
Judges for the award recognized Sunbird for its innovation and creativity in developing a software solution that tracks and provides a visual mapping of data center assets, including IT and facilities devices. With the increase of new services bombarding data centers, traditional asset tracking tools such as spreadsheets and Visio diagrams prove inadequate, and asset information often goes missing. Sunbird’s DCIM solution is a proven and effective way to provide accurate manage...
-
The truth is that with information pouring in from all different sources, it is almost impossible to parse through all the noise and figure out if DCIM software is right for your Data Center to consider starting a Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) project.
"You Need DCIM if" is a must-have e-Book that will reveal surefire signs you need a DCIM solution, and discusses how DCIM can optimize your data center operations and monitoring.
Click here to fill out a form to instantly download the eBook "You Need DCIM if" now.
-
Data Centers provide the basis for the delivery of new services and applications; it’s a crucial component of most modern organizations. But bringing new services up quickly can rack up business costs. To counter this, data center operations optimization projects are undertaken to streamline existing IT procedures, reduce operational costs, and increase productivity.
Automation is Key
Using DCIM to automate and streamline time-consuming processes can help optimize data center operations and reduce expenses. DCIM solutions provide functionality that automatically discovers, populates, and stores asset information supporting the new services, saving personnel the time previously spent ma...
-
Southern Methodist University’s upcoming fall 2014 graduate degree program in data center engineering is clear indication of the need for trained data center professionals in the marketplace. According to the U.S. Department of Labor statistics, the data center operations workforce tops 4 million people today and is expected to grow to more than two million by 2018. But how many of them are formally trained in data center operations best practices? While traditionally data centers have been run by IT staff, they have now evolved to a point where they require specialization in functional areas such as: facilities, infrastructure and subsystems; data center systems engineering and analytic...
-
Worldwide demand for real-time data, applications, and services has led to an unprecedented increase in data center density and energy costs. While IT equipment accounts for 50% of those energy costs, another 37% is consumed when cooling and circulating air; a figure that amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars per year.
IT departments often overcool data centers to ensure that their mission critical equipment will not fail due to overheating. But studies have shown this is an unnecessary and costly practice. According to David J. Cappuccio, Gartner Managing VP and Chief of research:
“Data center managers can save up to 4 percent in energy costs for every degree of upward change in...
-
The best time to get funding for DCIM is in conjunction with a major business-related IT project such as a data center construction, relocation, co-location, expansion, or even the deployment of a new business-critical application. The budget for all of these projects will likely include an allocation for additional resources and tools to facilitate successful project execution.
As you prepare your argument for stakeholders and decision makers, first identify your most costly data center problems that can be fixed with DCIM. Focus on those problems that are most critical and are of “highest-value”, i.e. cost the most to you operationally.
For instance, once a data center has grown bey...
-
You’ve been here before – a new enterprise solution comes out of nowhere promising to cut costs, reduce inefficiencies, and increase productivity – and now you’re scrambling to figure out if those seemingly intangible value propositions are really something you need, how it all fits into your current system, whether you can ever hope to recoup your initial investment, and what it spells for your career in both the best and worst case scenarios.
Well DCIM isn’t that kind of a solution. At its core, there are real, measurable value propositions that are self-evident to any data center employee: Efficient energy consumption, effective infrastructure management, and maintaining high availabilit...
