Checklist to evaluate and ponderate differet DCiM Software tool to Data Center management. How to compare diferents software marquet to facilities management.

1. Pep Alfonso Guzmán
Business Development en TREDS
Instructor DCCP & EEBP en DCPRO
pep.alfonso@tredsolutions.com Página 1
DCiM Evaluation Checklist
Esta tabla puede ser utilizada para evaluar los requerimientos técnicos entre
diferentes soluciones de DCiM del mercado, asignando un valor a cada entrada,
determinado a partir de las necesidades del cliente.
Id Requirements Weight Yes/No No Comments
1
It must be included data centre assets and physical
infrastructure.
10
2
Access to accurate, actionable data about the
current state and future needs of our data centre
infrastructure
10
3 Standard procedures for equipment changes. 10
4 Single source of truth for asset management 10
5
Better predictability for space, power and cooling
capacity means increased time to plan
10
6
Reduced operating cost from energy usage
effectiveness and efficiency
10
7
Must be capable of hosting additional add-on
modules
10
8
Allow customer users to perform:
· Power and Cooling Capacity Management of Data
Center
· Physical Threat Management Surveillance
· Change Management
10
9
Capability to add locations and rooms of different
types to data centre model to represent the physical
enterprise infrastructure.
5
10 Capability to render the floor layout in 2D. 10
11 Capability to render the floor layout in 3D. 5
12
Capability to communicate and allow monitoring of
multi-vendor Simple Network Management Protocol
(SNMP) devices and provide a real-time status.
10
13 DCIM will run on a centralized server/appliance 5
14
It must be accessed remotely from client
workstation/servers via HTTP/HTTPS.
10
15
It will be a standard part of the DCIM notification
architecture:
10

2. Pep Alfonso Guzmán
Business Development en TREDS
Instructor DCCP & EEBP en DCPRO
pep.alfonso@tredsolutions.com Página 2
· Send alerts to a valid email or mobile device
· And/or traps to a Network Management System.
16
The software may be deployed to a standalone
server or as a virtual machine image on a VM host.
10
17
Interface will provide Monitoring and Surveillance of
device status, device data, and device events.
10
18
Interface will also provide configuration, graphing
and trending options.
10
19
The solution will collect data from:
· Uninterruptible Power System (UPS)
· Power Distribution Unit (PDU)
· Rack PDU (rPDU)
· Computer Room Air Conditioning (CRAC)
· Environmental Sensors
· Automatic Transfer Switch (ATS)
10
20
The data will be collected with:
· Supplied Generator
· Surveillance Camera’s
· Multi-vendor SNMP devices (UPS, PDU, CRAC, and
rPDU)
· Other infrastructure systems as specified
10
21
Monitoring and System overview
· Overview of systems and landscape
· Configuration
· Event notification
10
22
Inventory Management:
· Floor layout. Location, building, row, rack and RU
within the rack.
· Rack elevation view
· Forecast commissioning. Preventing incorrect
placement of assets and visualizing the future state
of the Data Center before the physical move.
· Cabling. Track current cabling, Fiber, Cooper and
SAN connectivity through network.
· Auto updates network data cabling changes.
· Patch panels ports layout, used and free ports.
Fabric, connections.
15
23
Capacity and Energy efficiency management:
· Capacity Planning
· Power Analysis and current power usage.
· Cooling Analysis. Current Unit analysis, forecast, hot
spots.
· Energy efficiency Monitoring
10

3. Pep Alfonso Guzmán
Business Development en TREDS
Instructor DCCP & EEBP en DCPRO
pep.alfonso@tredsolutions.com Página 3
· Identify underutilized server and infrastructure
components
24
Reports, Dashboards and KPI map View:
· Standard report templates
· Dashboards. Current and historical PUE and DciE
· Datacenter KPI View
10
25
Change management and mobile support
· Change Management
· Work orders
· Mobile support
5
26
Integration with other systems:
· Virtualization integration
· Web services support. Allow other systems access
its database for application integration.
5
27
The DCIM capability must be support thousands of
devices with different and multiple measurements.
10
28
The ability to collect information must be scalable (it
will be overwhelming in a short time).
5
29 DCIM tool must quickly sort through this data. 5
30
DCIM tool must quickly provide actionable
recommendations for the management team.
10
31
Data collected over time must be stored for
extracting and trending.
5
32
Device Reports will be sortable through the user
interface and will be sorted by date range or by
relative date.
10
33
Data will be exportable in a plain text format that
will have a data delimiter.
5
34
The tool will have the ability to create user defined
summary reports for a device, group of devices, or
specific sensors for a particular device.
10
35
DCIM must support ad-hoc reporting based on
Customer requirements parameters.
10
36
Key information in designing the proper
infrastructure.
5
37
Help to architects to determine the optimum
placement of new servers.
10
38
Help to enforce standard processes for operating
the data center.
5
39
DCIM will provide operational data:
· Environmental data (temperature, humidity, air
flow)
· Power data (at the device, rack, zone and data
10

4. Pep Alfonso Guzmán
Business Development en TREDS
Instructor DCCP & EEBP en DCPRO
pep.alfonso@tredsolutions.com Página 4
center level)
· Cooling data
40
DCIM may also provide IT data; eg. CPU, memory,
disk, network
5
41
DCIM must analyse the key performance indicators
defined by customer (capacity planning decisions are
made based during the installation phase)
5
42 Maintenance: 3 years 5
43
For monitoring DCIM, the protocols what it has to
support are SNMP, Modbus, IPMI, WMI, ODBC
sources, WebServices, etc.
10
44
The smart panelling DCiM has and should that
system interfacing with smart cable management.
15
45
DCIM should interfacing with the energy
management system.
10
46
Full integration with Customer Service Manager and
uCMDB, performed with all the fields.
15
47
Detailed Architecture design for hosting the DCIM
solution delivered.
5
Sample comparative: