DCIM: an effective and versatile tool for managing data centers

DCIM, data center infrastructure management tools, are used to monitor the proper functioning of all data center equipment in real time and manage their physical infrastructure.

Broadly speaking, the main features of a DCIM are as follows:

• Supervision of IT rooms and infrastructure: real-time monitoring of critical physical components, such as servers, switches, power supply and cooling devices, network cables, UPS units, etc.
• Inventory and IT resource management: a comprehensive database of data center resources (racks, servers, applications, virtual machines, etc.), including their location, capacity, usage, and status, which facilitates asset management, capacity planning, and incident management.
• Monitoring of power consumption of equipment.
• Temperature and humidity monitoring to prevent cooling issues for IT equipment.
• Notifications in case of problems or deviations from predefined thresholds, allowing data center operations teams to intervene quickly to make necessary corrections.
• Data analysis and reporting: collection, processing, and analysis of data and detailed reports on resource usage, performance, power consumption, etc.

BMS systems, or Building Management Systems, allow for the management of a data center's entire physical infrastructure: cooling systems, power supply, security, lighting, etc., of the building. They collect data on energy consumption, temperature, humidity, security, etc. DCIM solutions, on the other hand, focus on managing the IT infrastructure and IT assets hosted within the data centers.

Originally, and this is obviously still the case, DCIM solutions allow for the detection, or even anticipation, of anomalies such as hardware failures, performance or capacity issues, network problems, and configuration errors.

Their main advantage is identifying potential problems before they cause outages. Thus, operations teams have the opportunity to work preventively rather than correctively, which reduces unplanned downtime and the overall costs of maintenance in operational condition for the equipment.

In addition, DCIM solutions monitor a wide variety of indicators in real time, such as energy consumption, environment (temperature, humidity levels, etc.), equipment operating status, and data center resource usage, including power, bandwidth, and storage capacity. In a context moving toward more sustainable IT, the information collected and analyzed by DCIM solutions is key for better capacity planning, extending the lifespan of hardware (by reducing 'blind' replacement), or even reducing the energy footprint of data centers (by optimizing cooling and energy consumption).

Furthermore, DCIM tools provide indicators that allow organizations to ensure compliance with the regulations in force in their sector of activity (GDPR, HDS, PCI-DSS, etc.) or with voluntary standards and frameworks, such as ISO 27001 or 50001, EN 50600, IEC30164, and meet associated audit needs.

There are many DCIM solutions on the market, all with their own specificities in terms of features, interoperability, ergonomics, and cost. Before starting a benchmark of the solutions available on the market, it is essential to clearly define your needs, constraints, and objectives in a set of specifications:

• Features: what are the essential, secondary, or incidental features expected (real-time supervision, energy management, storage capacity, etc.)?
• Pain points: what are the existing problems within the data center and the necessary improvements? How many incidents do you have to manage each year and how much time do you spend correcting them?
• Scalability: what future changes will you make to your data center? What features will be necessary in the future?
• Interoperability: do you have a complete mapping of the data center to ensure the compatibility of the DCIM solution with all technical elements of the data center?
• Maintenance in operational condition: who will be responsible for the operation and maintenance of the solution?
• Resources to operate the solution: do you have the internal resources to create, update, and delete equipment to match the reality of your IT room?
• Budget: how much are you willing to invest both to acquire a DCIM tool and to configure it to adapt to the specificities of your data center?
• Sustainability of the publisher and/or integrator, to guarantee the evolution of the DCIM solution over time.

Implementing a DCIM brings many gains, such as:

• Better operation of IT rooms, or even the data center
• Greater responsiveness in case of an incident and a reduction in intervention times
• Increased reliability, better management, and governance of data
• Time savings in ensuring the technical management of IT rooms
• Proactive equipment management, which reduces the number of incidents
• Anticipation and industrialization of work requests
• Easier communication of technical data, partially or totally depending on profiles
• Finer management of resources (cooling, square footage, electricity, rack fill rate, etc.), which contributes to improving data center performance

However, DCIM is not a universal solution: depending on your needs, your budget, the resources you have, and their level of technical mastery, other solutions may be more appropriate.

Among the proprietary solutions available on the DCIM market, we can mention the best known: Schneider Electric StruxureWare DCIM, Nlyte DCIM, Circonus DCIM, Sunbird / Raritan DCIM, or even Néphélé Data Control DAMS. On the open-source side, openDCIM has a large community and offers 100% customization. However, while licensing costs are eliminated, the solution may suffer from potential deficiencies in terms of features and support.

Regarding the cost of DCIM solutions, it is not always easy to make a comparison, as each publisher offers its own units of value for marketing its tool. Thus, the final cost may, for example, be based on a price per square meter of the room, per rack, or per connection point, which can considerably influence the total amount of the solution.

Note that the incorporation of dynamic information, such as kilowatt measurements via connected PDUs (Power Distribution Units), increases monitoring accuracy and therefore costs, but can lead to real energy savings and improve predictive maintenance.

The ratio of costs to potential savings and image, particularly in terms of sustainable IT, can represent a major indicator when choosing a DCIM.

By Soha Youssef, Business Engineer, and Cyril Le Vient, IT Project Cluster Manager, APL Data Center.