Data Centre Infrastructure Management and System Monitoring
The importance of using the right Data Centre Infrastructure Management (DCIM) and system monitoring strategies cannot be emphasised enough. It not only ensures that your resources are properly utilised, but helps avoid human errors and factors that cause downtime.
In the data centres of today, infrastructure management and system monitoring work together. There is today a huge demand for co-location and managed data centre services. Research indicates that the worldwide co-location market will be worth $54 billion by 2020, which is twice that of what it was worth in 2015 – $25.7 billion. That’s why it is so important to ensure that critical environments within a data centre operate optimally. What’s more, these advanced monitoring systems make it easier for data centre managers to address the high level of complexity of present customer environments.
Understand what to expect with robust DCIM and system monitoring
The very first thing is to make sure that all data centre staff are very much in agreement over what needs to be done. This is particularly important in relation to the infrastructure components. You must develop uniform standards for the purpose of identification of the various equipments used in the infrastructure. This means taking care of the access, electrical distribution, security, connectivity, mechanical tasks and various other systems which are critical to the running of the data centre.
Based on this there are certain rules for the working of the DCIM and system monitoring processes. In particular, there are 5 main components which should be considered for DCIM and system monitoring tasks:
1: Asset management: All staff working at the data centre should have a good knowledge of the IT assets used in the facility, especially those in the various customer environments. Efficient asset management can lower the hardware downtime and speed deployment time. It ensures that the available capacity is property used.
2. Power monitoring: You should have a clear idea of how energy is made use of in the data centre, and should have a good estimate of the various individual capacity needs. You should be able to make proper provisions for each of these requirements.
3. Environmental monitoring: By environmental monitoring, we mean knowing about the rack and power topology in the data centre, the relative humidity and temperature, failover alarms and capacity as well as the detailed historical trend data related to the co-located environment.
4. Change management: Change management or workflow management involves tracking any adjustments made to co-located environments, and knowing how these have an effect on the overall operations at the data centres.
5. Capacity planning: Capacity planning consists of a number of forward-looking processes which are based on the information collected during the following stages – asset management, power monitoring and environmental monitoring.
Final Thoughts
We have discussed the fundamental aspects of Data Centre Infrastructure Management and Systems Monitoring and how this can help data centre staff have a better idea of the current environment and resource usage at the data centre. Effective monitoring can help you plan for your clients’ fast expanding needs more efficiently while maintaining the critical systems uptime at the data centre.