EDITOR’S NOTE THE RIGHT DCIM TOOL CAN YIELD VALUABLE DATA

WITH DCIM, HOW MUCH DATA IS TOO MUCH DATA?

THE CONTROL AND COOPERATION CHALLENGES OF DCIM

Figure Out if Your Data Center Measures Up A data center infrastructure management tool can assess how well an organization consumes space, IT assets and energy. The challenge is finding one that provides data that’s usable.

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A Tool You Won’t Regret Buying

A data center’s performance is among the most scrutinized of business functions, and yet no one is quite sure if they’re doing it right. This is because it’s a complicated task, and also because each organization will consider certain variables important and others irrelevant.

Tools in the data center infrastructure man-agement, or DCIM, category attempt to solve this dilemma. DCIM products allow a company to measure how its data center uses equipment, energy and space, among other things. There’s almost no end to the information that can be collected, a reality that is both impressive and overwhelming.

Data center expert Robert McFarlane is a proponent of DCIM technologies, but he urges caution. It’s easy to be dazzled by all the capabilities, he writes in this guide, but these products are complex. You want a tool that your team can actually implement and easily use, McFarlane says, and something that

won’t bog you down with unusable data. He provides guidance on how to make sure you don’t end up regretting your DCIM choice. For instance, does the user interface require exten-sive training to use? Are the support resources that a vendor has promised readily available? These things will matter, maybe more than you think.

Also included is advice on how to incorporate a DCIM product into a business. TechTarget’s Stephen Bigelow writes about the pushing and pulling over control of DCIM. A facilities crew will have its point of view, and the IT team will have plenty to say, too. Getting the most out of a DCIM tool, he writes, will require workable compromises between these groups. n

Phil Sweeney Senior Managing Editor

Data Center and Virtualization GroupTechTarget

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The Right DCIM Tool Can Yield Valuable Data

Your DCIM package might be basic or big. Either way, you shouldn’t be running a data center today without it.

Even after your organization chooses a data center infrastructure management (DCIM) tool, plenty of questions remain unsettled. In fact, you may have more questions after you select a product than before.

Is it the right system? Does it do what you thought the vendor promised it would? Does it do what you promised management it could? Did you buy too much? Too little?

You want to implement a DCIM product that supplies information you need, not vol umes of data that you don’t. There will be problems, surprises and complexities.

THE BIG DEAL ABOUT STARTING SMALL

DCIM has been a buzzword in the industry for years, but interestingly, it still can’t be

precisely defined. There’s no particular way to outline what constitutes “good” DCIM, no sim-ple way to determine what would be best for your operation, and no formula for how much effort a system will require to operate.

DCIM is generally thought of as the gath-ering of IT and building facilities functions within an organization. Its goal is to provide admins with a comprehensive examination of a data center’s performance, so that energy, equipment and floor space are used at optimal efficiency.

Some organizations have had tremendous success with their DCIM implementations. Others have some degree of post-purchase remorse, finding they didn’t know enough when they took the leap.

A DCIM initiative is intended to provide admins with a comprehensive look at how an organization’s data center is behaving so that energy, equipment and floor space are used to

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maximum effect. The most comprehensive DCIM packages allow you to start relatively small—say, with power measurements and PUE tracking—and then add capabilities modularly as you get more comfortable with using the information. It takes time and experience to know which features will be most useful, so it’s not a great idea to buy too much at once.

Keep in mind that DCIM won’t be the answer to every problem, and it could even add to your difficulties. For example, watching temperature and humidity is basic. Adding the capability of monitoring your cooling equipment to predict potential problems is valuable, but it’s a com-plex thing to implement.

Strategically placed sensors are relatively easy to install, especially with the amount of wireless technology now available. Measur-ing water flow, fluid pressures, pump vibration and other mechanical pickups requires equip-ment shutdowns and heavy work to integrate. Even incorporating the masses of data available through IP connections to air conditioners can be daunting.

Much of that data is mainly there for manu-facturers to track performance and failures,

and each device delivers it in its own format. The DCIM system needs to parse the data, and to integrate it with the monitors from the rest of the mechanical chain, to deliver use-ful information. The most comprehensive

packages should have software modules pre-written for the most popular computer room air conditioning units and computer room air handlers, but it requires a lot of custom con-figuration. Still, having a system that will watch for mechanical anomalies—and alert you to impending failures before they occur—can be extremely valuable, especially in lower-tier facilities that can’t depend on redundancy to keep going.

Inventory tracking almost seems out of place in a system that evolved from managing power and cooling, but this feature can be a useful

It takes time and experience to know which features will be most useful, so it’s a good idea to be cautious about buying too much all at once.

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part of a DCIM package. It takes staff time to implement, but, once it’s in place, it can prac-tically maintain itself—especially when radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags or other auto-sensing approaches are included.

Knowing what hardware you have, how old it is, and where it’s located or been moved to, can save a lot of tracking time. When it’s inte-grated with data from the internal monitors in modern servers, it can be invaluable. You might identify equipment with decreasing utilization, be able to investigate why, and re-purpose that equipment or its applications. You may even choose to shut it down.

The magic word is data. It’s necessary, but it can be overwhelming. Do we really want more of it?

What most differentiates one DCIM package from another is what it does with that mass of data, what kinds of information it gives back, and how useful, easy to access, and coherent the information is.

A good test is whether a data-savvy IT person, who has not been specifically trained on the system, can recognize and act on a major alarm quickly and without assistance.

If not, the graphical user interface (GUI) logic is questionable. A trained specialist is rarely around when problems hit. (Murphy’s Law makes sure of that.) Minor alarms—if properly defined—and predictions of failing equipment are rightfully the province of a specialist, but major alarms should be actionable by anyone qualified to be in the data center in the first place.

During a product demonstration, have the sales engineer simulate a major problem, then call on a staffer to step forward and diagnose it—without assistance. If a DCIM product is overly complex or the functions and displays aren’t intuitively obvious, shop around for another product.

SUPPORT WILL MATTER

It’s a challenge to deploy DCIM, but you’ll need to plan for what comes after you’ve got that system up and running. For this, support will be essential.

Like anything else, DCIM is great when everything’s running right. But when it isn’t, or when you need to make changes, the amount

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and quality of help you get, for how long, and at what cost, is crucial.

Good support for configurations, upgrades, troubleshooting and ongoing operational train-ing should all be included in the maintenance cost. And there should be a quick escalation path to the best people. Don’t waste time with someone who’s just reading a script, giving you directions off a screen, and not really listening. Your DCIM-trained people are IT profession-als. They should be talking to other profession-als—not to the equivalent of robots.

Try a vendor’s help desk before buying. See how many menus you need to navigate, and who you’re talking or messaging with once you

get through. Nothing is worth your investment if maintenance is a convoluted, time-consum-ing challenge.

Ultimately, DCIM should become as normal in a data center as power supplies, air condi-tioners and servers. But it’s probably more dif-ficult to select and implement correctly than any of those other elements (with which we have many more years of experience).

Vendors will make many promises, and they’ll try to dazzle you throughout the sales cycle. But if you are thorough in your research, chances are you’ll end up with a product that meets your needs and that you can use effec-tively. —Robert McFarlane

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TOO MUCH DATA?

With DCIM, How Much Data is Too Much Data?

It’s all but impossible to define data center infrastructure management or explain precisely what it’s supposed to do. Why? Because DCIM tools are all different, and the data center infra-structures they monitor vary widely.

Any information beyond essential alerts is far-ranging, diverse and detailed. It really suits operations with staff support that can make use of the input. Data centers are complex, and they all could benefit from a DCIM tool—but only if the right tool is selected.

Before DCIM software and hardware, data center operators were happy just knowing if the temperature was rising, a cooling unit had failed or a UPS had gone into bypass. Now, servers, air conditioners, UPS systems, chiller plants, power strips and all other equipment spit out data on every facet of their inner workings.

It’s important to better manage our data centers for energy efficiency and reliability,

but equipment designers apparently think that since 256 is a nice binary number, they have to use every available bit for a data point—whether it’s important or not. It would be easy to conclude that ‘too much information’ aptly describes the world of DCIM.

Or does it? We can easily get too much data for any person to digest, but can we ever really have too much information?

Packages that capture more than basic data, and include features like IT-asset tracking, can certainly be useful, but those should not be the primary reasons for making a purchase decision. A good DCIM offering should turn the mountains of performance data into real management information that betters these complex and dynamic operations. What really defines good DCIM tools is how that goal is accomplished, and that’s what you should look for when evaluating a tool.

A good DCIM implementation should

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help bridge any gaps between IT and facili-ties teams, but without inundating the facili-ties staff with useless data. The same goes for building management. A good DCIM tool feeds selected alarms and alerts to the building man-agement or automation system, which moni-tors the whole campus, and often connects to the security desk. These people deal with much more than the data center and have minimal training on its use and operations.

Every DCIM product offers standardized graphical user interfaces (GUIs). The main screens should be logical enough for any user to quickly grasp at least 85% of what’s shown without explanation. If you can’t do that, it’s not intuitively designed and not the GUI you want.

In an emergency, nearly anyone should be able to quickly zero in on what’s wrong, even if

they haven’t used the DCIM system in a while or had detailed training on it. An effective DCIM tool should also generate easy-to-under-stand trends based on all that data, and ideally will also provide alerts before critical systems fail.

Maintaining the deployment should not be a full-time job. Staffing is tight enough in data centers; if it takes too much time to use and maintain a DCIM, the investment proves to be of minimal value. Maintenance time is partly a function of the DCIM design, but it can also result from overbuying a system.

A robust DCIM package should be modular. Get only what you need and can really use at the outset. Once you’re comfortable with the DCIM decision, evaluate the utility, cost and maintenance requirements of other modules to add. —Robert McFarlane

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The Control and Cooperation Challenges of DCIM

Data center infrastructure manage-ment software helps blend facilities and IT disciplines in the data center. The rise of DCIM use presents organizational problems, however, as traditional facilities or building management teams engage in a tug-of-war with IT over control.

DCIM encompasses many technologies, and this breadth of capabilities makes DCIM software selection and deployment particu-larly challenging. Major vendors like Nlyte, CA Technologies, Raritan, Emerson and others are developing products to address the needs of their respective constituent market segments.

No two DCIM tools are the same, and ven-dors play to their strengths with distinct product architectures. For example, Emerson’s Trellis offers a modular DCIM platform with units that assist with workflow tasks, and track and report IT assets, system health and energy usage and efficiency, along with another

module for monitoring via mobile devices. Nlyte’s DCIM suite provides a more granular range of facilities and IT capabilities: physi-cal asset management, floor planning, power and network connection planning, comput-ing capacity planning and reporting, workflow management and so on.

BEYOND ENERGY TRACKING

Historically, facilities used building manage-ment system software to handle data center power and cooling. IT used various server or systems management tools for asset provision-ing and monitoring. This siloed approach gave little reason for the teams to share information from disparate tools or regularly work together.

Then, CIOs began to target rising energy consumption and costs. Executives became wary of power, cooling and facilities costs. The green IT movement pushed concepts such as

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power and carbon-usage effectiveness. Vendors catered to this increased scrutiny with tools to monitor data center energy use.

Production-quality virtualization technol-ogy—combined with ever more efficient and capable computing hardware—profoundly improved the use of computing resources, dra-matically reduced server counts, eased energy use and almost singularly blunted years of anxiety about the spiraling energy and cooling costs.

This trend let DCIM software rapidly expand into more IT-centric tasks. “The focus has shifted away from energy monitoring and efficiency towards asset tracking and utiliza-tion, which then includes energy usage,” said David Cappuccio, a Gartner Research vice president specializing in servers and storage technologies.

A GROUP EFFORT

DCIM ownership can be segregated into dis-tinct groups. Deploying and maintaining a DCIM platform is typically within the realm of the IT operations staff responsible for

providing the servers, storage, networking and other computing resources. The actual data center monitoring information and insights still swing between facilities and IT, which can share the same platform as complementary—rather than confrontational—stakeholders.

“Operations owns the [DCIM] product today, and everyone has access,” said David Brown, president of Datotel, a cloud and colocation provider in St. Louis and DCIM user since 2009. “Each group looks for different pieces of information, so DCIM is a single ‘point of truth’ rather than different systems tracking different things.”

For example, an IT operations group might install, configure and maintain the DCIM product, while other departments within the business use its monitoring and reporting functions. Facilities can still track energy use, manage a proliferation of intelligent building sensors, and plan for power system distribution maintenance or upgrades. IT leaders perform capacity planning, track assets and optimize workflows.

DCIM is also embraced by other business constituents, benefiting from the planning and

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performance insights of today’s platforms. “We provide data center space, so the sales team can query the [DCIM] system to find capacity,” Brown said. “This helps the client experience and lets us move faster, with better information.”

Centralizing and sharing DCIM also improves application development and employee train-ing. For example, DCIM tools often include comprehensive APIs that allow external pro-grams to access and process monitoring data—in-house software development will eventually use DCIM for better insights and to boost business processes.

“If business leaders want VM workloads to migrate between different racks based on the sensor data, this [use of DCIM APIs] is how it

can happen,” said Pete Sclafani, COO and co-founder of 6connect, a network automation systems provider in San Francisco.

While facilities and IT teams have disputed the ownership of DCIM, modern deployments are firmly in the hands of the latter. Scla-fani notes that facilities groups increasingly embrace the value of IT-related technologies. For instance, adding a TCP/IP-enabled Simple Network Management Protocol card to an HVAC unit integrates the cooling unit into the facilities monitoring scheme. This helps ease any remaining contention between groups.

Still, the degree of cooperation and collabo-ration between facilities, operations and IT will depend on corporate culture changes and effec-tive executive leadership. —Stephen J. Bigelow

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ABOUT THE

AUTHORS

STEPHEN J. BIGELOW, the senior technology editor in the Data Center and Virtualization Media Group at Tech-Target, has more than 20 years of technical writing expe-rience in the PC/technology industry.

ROBERT MCFARLANE, a principal in charge of data center design for the international consulting firm Shen Milsom and Wilke, has spent more than 35 years in communica-tions consulting. He has experience in every segment of the data center industry and was a pioneer in developing the field of building cable design. McFarlane also teaches the data center facilities course in the Marist College Institute for Data Center Professional program.

Figure Out if Your Data Center Measures Up is a SearchDataCenter.com publication.

Margie Semilof | Editorial Director

Phil Sweeney | Senior Managing Editor

Dan Cagen | Associate Features Editor

Linda Koury | Director of Online Design

Rebecca Kitchens | Publisher rkitchens@techtarget.com

TechTarget 275 Grove Street, Newton, MA 02466

www.techtarget.com

© 2016 TechTarget Inc. No part of this publication may be transmitted or repro-duced in any form or by any means without written permission from the pub-lisher. TechTarget reprints are available through The YGS Group.

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