DCIM Yields Return on Investment

By: Michael Potts

As with any investment in the data center, the question of the return on the investment should be raised before purchasing a Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) solution. In the APC white paper, “How Data Center Infrastructure Management Software Improves Planning and Cuts Operational Costs,” the authors highlight the savings from a DCIM solution saying, “The deployment of modern planning tools can result in hundreds of man-hours saved per year and thousands of dollars saved in averted downtime costs.”

DCIM will not transform your data center overnight, but it will begin the process. While it isn’t necessary to reach the full level of maturity before seeing benefits, the areas of benefit are significant and can bring results in the short-term. The three primary methods in which DCIM provides ROI are:

• Improved Energy Efficiency
• Improved Availability
• Improved Manageability

DCIM LEADS TO IMPROVED ENERGY EFFICIENCY

In his blog, Dan Fry gets right to the heart of DCIM’s role in improving energy efficiency when he says, “To improve energy efficiency inside the data center, IT executives need comprehensive information, not isolated data. They need to be able to ‘see’ the problem in order to manage and correct it because, as we all know, you can’t manage what you don’t understand.”

The information provided by DCIM can help data center managers in reducing energy consumption:

MATCHING SUPPLY WITH DEMAND

Oversizing is one of the biggest roadblocks to energy efficiency in the data center. In an APC survey of data center utilization, only 20 percent of respondents had a utilization of 60 percent or more, while 50 percent had a utilization of 30 percent or less. One of the primary factors for oversizing is the lack of power and cooling data to help make informed decisions on the amount of infrastructure required. DCIM solutions can provide information on both demand and supply to allow you to “right-size” the infrastructure, reducing overall energy costs by as much as 30 percent.

IDENTIFYING UNDER-UTILIZED SERVERS

As many as 10 percent of servers are estimated to be “ghost servers,” servers which are running no applications, yet still consume 70 percent or more of the resources of a fully-utilized server. DCIM solutions can help to find these under-utilized servers Which could be decommissioned, re-purposed or consolidated as well as servers which do not have power management functionality enabled, reducing IT energy usage as well as delaying the purchase of additional servers.

MEASURING THE IMPACT OF INFRASTRUCTURE CHANGES

DCIM tools can measure energy efficiency metrics such as Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), Data Center Infrastructure Efficiency (DCiE) and Corporate Average Datacenter Efficiency (CADE). These metrics serve to focus attention on increasing the energy efficiency of data centers and to measure the results of changes to the infrastructure. In the white paper “Green Grid Data Center Power Efficiency Metrics: PUE and DCiE,” the authors lay out the case for the introduction of metrics to measure energy efficiency in the data center. The Green Grid believes that several metrics can help IT organizations better understand and improve the energy efficiency of their existing data centers as well as help them make smarter decisions on new data center deployments. In addition, these metrics provide a dependable way to measure their results against comparable IT organizations.

IMPROVED AVAILABILITY

DCIM solutions can improve availability in the following areas:

Understanding the Relationship Between Devices
A DCIM solution can help to answer questions such as “What systems will be impacted if I take the UPS down for maintenance?” It does this by understanding the relationship between devices, including the ability to track power and network chains. This information can be used to identify single points of failure and reduce downtime due to both planned and unplanned events.

Improved Change Management
When investigating an issue, examination of the asset’s change log allows problem managers to recommend a fix over 80 percent of the time, with a first fix rate of over 90 percent. This reduces the mean time to repair and increases system availability. DCIM systems which automate the change management process will log both authorized and unauthorized changes, increasing the data available to the problem manager and increasing the chances the issue can be quickly resolved.

Root Cause Analysis
One of the problems sometimes faced by data center managers is too much data. Disconnecting a router from the network might cause tens or hundreds of link lost alarms for the downstream devices. It is often difficult to find the root cause amidst all of the “noise” associated with cascading events. By understanding the relationship between devices, DCIM solution can help to narrow the focus to the single device — the router, in this case — which is causing the problem.  By directing focus on the root cause, the problem can be resolved more quickly, reducing the associated downtime.

IMPROVED MANAGEABILITY

DCIM solutions can improve manageability in the following areas:

Data Center Audits
Regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPA and CFR-11 increase the requirements for physical equipment audits. DCIM solutions provide a single source of the data to greatly reduce the time and cost to complete the audits. Those DCIM tools utilizing asset auto-discovery and asset location mechanisms such as RFID can further reduce the effort to perform a physical audit.

Asset Management
DCIM can be used to determine the best place to deploy new equipment based on the availability of rack space, power, cooling and network ports. It then can be used to track all of the changes from the initial request through deployment, system moves and changes, all the way through to decommissioning. The DCIM solution can provide detailed information on thousands of assets in the data center including location, system configuration, how much power it is drawing, relationship to other devices, and so on, without having to rely on spreadsheets or home-grown tools.

Capacity Planning
With a new or expanded data center representing a substantial capital investment, the ability to postpone new data center builds could save millions of dollars. DCIM solutions can be used to reclaim capacity at the server, rack and data center levels to maximize space, power and cooling resources. Using actual device power readings instead of the overly conservative nameplate values will allow an increase in the number of servers supported by a PDU without sacrificing availability. DCIM tools can track resource usage over time and provide much more accurate estimates of when additional equipment needs to be purchased.

This is the fifth article in the Data Center Knowledge Guide to DCIM series. To download the complete DCK Guide to DCIM click here.

Selecting a #DCIM Tool to Fit your #DataCenter ?

How Do I Select a DCIM Tool to Fit My Data Center?

• By: Michael Potts

Although similar in many respects, every data center is unique. In choosing a Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) solution, data center managers might choose very different solutions based on their needs.  It is somewhat analogous to two people choosing a lawn care service. One might simply want the grass mowed once a week.  The other might want edging, fertilizing, seeding and other services in addition to mowing.  As a result, they may choose different lawn service companies or, at the least, expect to pay very different amounts for the service they will be receiving.  Before choosing a DCIM solution, it is important to first know what it is you want to receive from the solution.

It is also important to remember that DCIM cannot single-handedly do the job of data center management.  It is only part of the overall management solution. While the DCIM tools, or sometimes a suite of tools working together, are a valuable component, a complete management solution must also incorporate procedures which allow the DCIM tools to be effectively used.

CHOOSING A DCIM SOLUTION

It is important to remember that DCIM solutions are about providing information. The question which must be asked (and answered) prior to choosing a DCIM solution is “What information do I need in order to manage my data center?” The answer to this question is the key to helping you choose the DCIM solution which will best suit your needs. Consider the following two data centers looking to purchase a DCIM solution.

DATA CENTER A

Data Center A has a lot of older, legacy equipment which is being monitored using an existing Building Management System (BMS). The rack power strips do not have monitoring capability. The management staff currently tracks assets using spreadsheets and Visio drawings. The data has not been meticulously maintained, however, and has questionable accuracy. The primary management goal is getting a handle on the assets they have in the data center.

DATA CENTER B

Data Center B is a new data center. It has new infrastructure equipment which can be remotely monitored through Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). The racks are equipped with metered rack PDUs. The primary management goals are to (1) collect and accurately maintain asset data, (2) monitor and manage the power and cooling infrastructure, and (3) monitor server power and CPU usage.

DIFFERENT DCIM DEPLOYED

While both data center operators would likely benefit from DCIM, they may very well choose different solutions. The goal for Data Center A is to more accurately track the assets in the data center. They may choose to pre-load the data they have in spreadsheets and then verify the data. If so, they will want a DCIM which will allow them to load data from spreadsheets. If they feel their current data is not reliable, they may instead choose to start from ground zero and collect all of the data manually.

If so, loading the data from a spreadsheet might be a desirable feature but is no longer a hard requirement.  Since the infrastructure equipment is being monitored using a BMS, they might specify integration with their existing BMS as a requirement for their DCIM.

Data Center B has entirely different requirements. It doesn’t have existing data in spreadsheets, so they need to collect the asset data as quickly and accurately as possible. They may specify auto-discovery as a requirement for their DCIM solution. In addition, they have infrastructure equipment which needs to be monitored, so they will want the DCIM to be able to collect real-time data down to the rack level. Finally, they want to be able to monitor server power and CPU usage, so they will want a DCIM which can communicate with their servers.

Prior to choosing a DCIM solution, spend time determining what information is required to manage the data center. Start with the primary management goals such as increasing availability, meeting service level agreements, increasing data center efficiency and providing upper-level management reports on the current and future state of the data center. Next, determine the information that you need to accomplish these high-level goals. A sample of questions you might ask includes the following:

• What data do I need to measure availability?
• What data do I need to measure SLA compliance?
• What data do I need to measure data center efficiency?
• What data do I need to forecast capacity of critical resources?
• What data do I need for upper-level management reports?

DEFINING REQUIREMENTS

These questions will begin to define the scope of the requirements for a DCIM solution. As you start to narrow down the focus of the questions, you will also be defining more specific DCIM requirements.

For example, you might start with a requirement for the DCIM to provide real-time monitoring. This is still rather vague, however, so additional questions must be asked to narrow the focus.

How do you define “real-time” data? To some, real-time data might mean thousands of data points per second with continuous measurement. To others, it might mean measuring data points every few minutes or once an hour. There is a vast difference between a system which does continuous measurement and one which measures once an hour. Without knowing how you are going to use the data, you will likely end up buying the wrong solution. Either you will purchase a solution which doesn’t provide the data granularity you want or you will over-spend on a system which provides continuous measurement when all you want is trending data every 15 minutes.

What data center equipment do you want to monitor? The answer to this question may have the biggest impact on the solution you choose. If you have some data center equipment which communicates using SNMP and other equipment which communicates using Modbus, for example, you will want to choose a DCIM solution which can speak both of these protocols. If you want the DCIM tool to retrieve detailed server information, you will want to choose a DCIM solution which can speak IPMI and other server protocols. Prior to talking to potential DCIM vendors, prepare a list of equipment with which you want to retrieve information.

Similar questions should be asked for each facet of DCIM — asset management, change management, real-time monitoring, workflow, and so on — to form a specific list of DCIM requirements. Prioritize the information you need so you can narrow your focus to those DCIM solutions which address your most important requirements.

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