DCIM (data center infrastructure management) software allows data center managers to monitor, optimize, and plan power and cooling capacity in the data center. There are two main types of DCIM software: monitoring/automation software which monitors infrastructure and alarms or controls devices, and planning/implementation software which ensures efficient equipment deployment and simulates scenarios. DCIM tools have become essential for data centers as availability and costs are intertwined with facility management.
Data Center Infrastructure Management Demystified Sunbird DCIM
DCIM software is becoming core to datacenter operations by providing centralized monitoring and management of infrastructure assets. Where manual processes were previously used, DCIM solutions integrate data on inventory, capacity, power, cooling and workflows. This allows issues to be proactively addressed, utilization to be optimized, and productivity to increase. The document outlines typical DCIM components, problems it addresses, benefits around time savings and competitive advantage, and steps to get started with DCIM.
DCIM tools address key challenges of IT managers by monitoring infrastructure data and enabling intelligent analysis. This allows issues like downtime and wasted resources to be addressed. DCIM tools integrate various systems to provide visibility of how all components work as an ecosystem. They help plan resource allocation, analyze historical data to improve performance, and simulate scenarios to prevent failures. Virtualization and cloud computing enhance efficiency by enabling higher power densities, focused cooling, and reducing unused servers. DCIM tools are important for reliability and monitoring infrastructure in dynamic virtualized environments. They also help predict future capacity and investment needs.
The document describes the features and benefits of iTRACS Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software. The software provides holistic management of physical infrastructure, including IT assets, facilities, power, and space. It aims to help users reduce costs, improve efficiency, and optimize capacity planning through features like predictive analytics, 3D visualization, asset management, and workflow automation. The software claims to provide insights and tools to lower operating expenses, defer capital expenditures, and ensure business needs are optimally supported by the infrastructure.
StruxureWare is Schneider Electric's DCIM software suite that integrates various data center management applications. It provides visibility and control of infrastructure assets from the building level down to the server. The software suite monitors and manages key metrics like power, cooling capacity, and IT asset usage. It helps optimize data center performance and efficiency through features like real-time monitoring, capacity planning, and energy analytics. Schneider Electric is a leading DCIM provider due to its comprehensive product portfolio, expertise, and ability to deliver an end-to-end solution for data center management.
The document discusses APC by Schneider Electric solutions for data centers and IT environments. It introduces their latest SMB solution called the Netshelter CX, which is a soundproofed "server room in a box" available in three sizes. It also discusses how cloud computing impacts data center power and infrastructure, and how APC can help through services like efficiency assessments and claims of efficiency entitlement. The document promotes APC's software solutions for data center management and optimization through virtual machine migration and communication between physical and virtual infrastructure systems.
DCIM Software Five Years Later: What I Wish I Had Known When I Started (Case ...Sunbird DCIM
Steve Lancaster from Chevron presented on his experience implementing a DCIM (data center infrastructure management) solution over five years. He discussed how DCIM helped him achieve goals like asset management, aligning space and power usage, and inventory reports. Lancaster highlighted collaborating with the vendor as critical. He wished he had better understood all of DCIM's capabilities upfront and set up power monitoring. Looking ahead, Lancaster wants to utilize DCIM for capacity planning, run power failure scenarios, and streamline processes.
The document discusses data center infrastructure management (DCIM) solutions. It defines DCIM as systems that collect and manage data about a data center's assets, resource use, and operational status throughout the lifecycle to help optimize performance and meet business goals. The document outlines challenges in data center management like availability, efficiency, costs, and changing needs. It then describes Schneider Electric's DCIM solutions and tools that provide integrated management of physical infrastructure, IT systems, and business processes to address these challenges.
Learning simulators reflect the expertise of software programmers, technical experts and learning professionals in creating real-life workplace scenarios that require decision making on the part of the training employee. Not to be confused with e-learning or laboratory practice, these simulators offer the flexibility to address the aptitudes, tools and motivations specific for the employee’s role. By actively involving trainees and exposing them to the consequences and results of their decisions, learning is improved significantly compared to training that does not involve interactivity. This approach also improves the trainee’s motivation and confidence. Organizations benefit not only from more comprehensive employee knowledge but also heightened on-the-job employee engagement – all with less training cost and time invested.
Business sectors that see particular advantage to learning simulators are public utilities, industrial machinery, transportation, education, social services, and hotel and restaurant services. Beyond learning the processes and procedures involved and the relevant regulations and safety guidelines for the specific sector, the employee gains appropriate customer interaction skills through real-world scenarios requiring decision making and evaluation of the results of those decisions.
Schneider Electric has developed learning simulators that have proven highly successful for Ministry-level programs and for industry federations in Spain; for risk prevention programs in regional governments; and socially and environmentally sustainable practices in construction work. In these projects, Schneider Electric provided comprehensive definition, design, and technical development and production expertise to help clients realize the benefits of effective learning simulation.
Data Center Infrastructure Management Demystified Sunbird DCIM
DCIM software is becoming core to datacenter operations by providing centralized monitoring and management of infrastructure assets. Where manual processes were previously used, DCIM solutions integrate data on inventory, capacity, power, cooling and workflows. This allows issues to be proactively addressed, utilization to be optimized, and productivity to increase. The document outlines typical DCIM components, problems it addresses, benefits around time savings and competitive advantage, and steps to get started with DCIM.
DCIM tools address key challenges of IT managers by monitoring infrastructure data and enabling intelligent analysis. This allows issues like downtime and wasted resources to be addressed. DCIM tools integrate various systems to provide visibility of how all components work as an ecosystem. They help plan resource allocation, analyze historical data to improve performance, and simulate scenarios to prevent failures. Virtualization and cloud computing enhance efficiency by enabling higher power densities, focused cooling, and reducing unused servers. DCIM tools are important for reliability and monitoring infrastructure in dynamic virtualized environments. They also help predict future capacity and investment needs.
The document describes the features and benefits of iTRACS Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software. The software provides holistic management of physical infrastructure, including IT assets, facilities, power, and space. It aims to help users reduce costs, improve efficiency, and optimize capacity planning through features like predictive analytics, 3D visualization, asset management, and workflow automation. The software claims to provide insights and tools to lower operating expenses, defer capital expenditures, and ensure business needs are optimally supported by the infrastructure.
StruxureWare is Schneider Electric's DCIM software suite that integrates various data center management applications. It provides visibility and control of infrastructure assets from the building level down to the server. The software suite monitors and manages key metrics like power, cooling capacity, and IT asset usage. It helps optimize data center performance and efficiency through features like real-time monitoring, capacity planning, and energy analytics. Schneider Electric is a leading DCIM provider due to its comprehensive product portfolio, expertise, and ability to deliver an end-to-end solution for data center management.
The document discusses APC by Schneider Electric solutions for data centers and IT environments. It introduces their latest SMB solution called the Netshelter CX, which is a soundproofed "server room in a box" available in three sizes. It also discusses how cloud computing impacts data center power and infrastructure, and how APC can help through services like efficiency assessments and claims of efficiency entitlement. The document promotes APC's software solutions for data center management and optimization through virtual machine migration and communication between physical and virtual infrastructure systems.
DCIM Software Five Years Later: What I Wish I Had Known When I Started (Case ...Sunbird DCIM
Steve Lancaster from Chevron presented on his experience implementing a DCIM (data center infrastructure management) solution over five years. He discussed how DCIM helped him achieve goals like asset management, aligning space and power usage, and inventory reports. Lancaster highlighted collaborating with the vendor as critical. He wished he had better understood all of DCIM's capabilities upfront and set up power monitoring. Looking ahead, Lancaster wants to utilize DCIM for capacity planning, run power failure scenarios, and streamline processes.
The document discusses data center infrastructure management (DCIM) solutions. It defines DCIM as systems that collect and manage data about a data center's assets, resource use, and operational status throughout the lifecycle to help optimize performance and meet business goals. The document outlines challenges in data center management like availability, efficiency, costs, and changing needs. It then describes Schneider Electric's DCIM solutions and tools that provide integrated management of physical infrastructure, IT systems, and business processes to address these challenges.
Learning simulators reflect the expertise of software programmers, technical experts and learning professionals in creating real-life workplace scenarios that require decision making on the part of the training employee. Not to be confused with e-learning or laboratory practice, these simulators offer the flexibility to address the aptitudes, tools and motivations specific for the employee’s role. By actively involving trainees and exposing them to the consequences and results of their decisions, learning is improved significantly compared to training that does not involve interactivity. This approach also improves the trainee’s motivation and confidence. Organizations benefit not only from more comprehensive employee knowledge but also heightened on-the-job employee engagement – all with less training cost and time invested.
Business sectors that see particular advantage to learning simulators are public utilities, industrial machinery, transportation, education, social services, and hotel and restaurant services. Beyond learning the processes and procedures involved and the relevant regulations and safety guidelines for the specific sector, the employee gains appropriate customer interaction skills through real-world scenarios requiring decision making and evaluation of the results of those decisions.
Schneider Electric has developed learning simulators that have proven highly successful for Ministry-level programs and for industry federations in Spain; for risk prevention programs in regional governments; and socially and environmentally sustainable practices in construction work. In these projects, Schneider Electric provided comprehensive definition, design, and technical development and production expertise to help clients realize the benefits of effective learning simulation.
This document discusses the utility and limitations of PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) as a data center efficiency metric. While PUE is a useful high-level metric, it does not provide enough detail to optimize efficiency. PUE only measures the ratio of total facility power to IT equipment power, but does not account for factors like server utilization, resilience, or diversity of the IT load. The document argues that more detailed energy monitoring data is needed at the server, rack, and application level over time to properly evaluate efficiency and enable tangible efficiency actions.
Deerns Data Center Chameleon 20110913 V1.1euroamerican
The Chameleon Data Center was designed to dynamically adapt to meet changing business needs in terms of IT space, cooling, power and reliability tiers, while maintaining energy efficiency. It utilizes a unique combination of centralized and decentralized systems to deliver flexible IT power and cooling across a range of power densities, reliability tiers and capacities from the same infrastructure. This reduces upfront investment costs and allows customers to decide how to configure the data center space until equipment installation. The design achieves flexibility without additional costs through a modular infrastructure that can be easily adapted.
AspectCTRM is the only Web-based trade, risk and operations management solution.
Fuel Marketers can now benefit from this leading professional system with an efficient
and cost-effective way to manage streams of trading and transport activity. Traders, risk
managers, schedulers, procurement and back-office personnel rely on this comprehensive,
affordable solution.
The Mine Central Control Room: From Concept to Reality Schneider Electric
Presented at the 2013 Society of Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration Annual Meeting (SME 2013). The main concept of a central control room is the ability to gather and automatically transform information from different sources and mines into business decisions, centralizing and monitoring them from a single location. This central control room also acts as a complete repository of all business operations including mine planning, metrics, asset management, quality and process control, surveillance, sustainability data, emissions, energy efficiency projects, weather and more.
Unprecedented performance and scalability demonstrated for meter data management. The benchmark was performed at the IBM Power Systems Benchmark Center in Montpellier, France, on
a single IBM POWER7® system, utilizing 16 cores
Utilities are looking to adopt mobile solutions to increase efficiency and productivity, improve decision making, and reduce costs. Capgemini developed a mobile solution for Hydro One Networks to automate the mass replacement of over 1.2 million electrical meters across Ontario. The mobile solution streamlined the meter replacement process, allowing installations to be completed same-day instead of taking 2-3 weeks. The solution provided significant cost savings by digitizing the end-to-end process and enabling real-time monitoring and issue resolution. Mobile technologies provide benefits like faster completion of repetitive tasks, two-way information exchange, and integration with existing enterprise systems. Utilities must select solutions that are easy to use, flexible, durable, and support future needs and technology
1) Business continuity planning (BCP) involves maintaining business operations during disruptions through alternative sites, data backups, and emergency plans. It is important for banks to mitigate risks from hardware failures, natural disasters, and other events.
2) A BCP has several phases including initiation, analysis of business impacts, plan design and development, implementation, testing, and maintenance. It may involve alternatives like cold sites for future expansion or hot sites that are immediately available.
3) Performing a business impact analysis identifies critical systems and functions and their tolerance for downtime. It assists in risk assessment and prioritization of recovery needs. Data centers are important IT assets that require redundancy, reliability, security and environmental controls to ensure
The document discusses IBM's virtualization journey and the benefits of virtualization. It describes how virtualization can help consolidate resources, manage workloads more efficiently with a single management interface, and automate processes to improve IT agility and business responsiveness. Key steps in the virtualization journey include consolidation, management, automation, and optimization of IT infrastructure and workloads.
How Test Labs Reduce Cyber Security Threats to Industrial Control Systemse cy...Schneider Electric
Federal agencies are moving their industrial control systems (ICS) from operational business networks to separate, dedicated networks in order to enhance security. However, without a system to test the new equipment and software coming into these separate networks, security risks will persist. This paper explores the impact on security of instituting a sanctioned ICS test lab and recommends best practices for setting up and operating these labs.
Datacenter Transformation - Energy And Availability - Dio Van Der ArendHPDutchWorld
(1) Datacenters are facing increasing demands that many current facilities cannot meet, requiring transformation through consolidation, virtualization, and improved energy efficiency and availability.
(2) Datacenter designs are evolving from small, isolated IT islands to larger, standardized facilities with improved reliability through redundant critical systems and failover capabilities.
(3) Next generation datacenter designs focus on high power density, energy efficiency through technologies like containerization, and rapid deployment in multiple locations for business flexibility.
IT Authorities implemented the Nimsoft Monitoring Solution (NMS) as its core monitoring platform to address the challenges of demonstrating more value to clients and meeting the needs of its growing business. NMS provides unified monitoring across client infrastructures through customizable portal views. This enables greater insight into critical systems and applications. NMS also scales to support both smaller and larger accounts, allowing IT Authorities to secure new business and meet evolving client needs through sophisticated monitoring capabilities.
The document discusses optimizing facility efficiency in federal mission-critical environments. It recommends taking a long-term approach to planning by understanding organizational goals and bridging IT and facilities. Key steps include assessing existing facilities, selecting efficient equipment, right-sizing capacity, and establishing monitoring, maintenance, and benchmarking programs to ensure optimization over time. Regular maintenance is emphasized as critical for sustained efficiency gains and reliability.
The document provides a five-step process for planning a new data center: 1) Determine design parameters like capacity, budget, growth plan, etc. 2) Develop a system concept by selecting a reference design. 3) Determine user requirements like preferences and constraints. 4) Generate a specification. 5) Generate a construction design. It emphasizes involving the right stakeholders, communicating at the right level of abstraction, and avoiding common mistakes like poor budgeting or an IT-focused rather than business-focused design. Following the standardized process can help complete projects on time and on budget by eliminating potential pitfalls.
Data center systems or subsystems that are pre-assembled in a factory are often described with terms like prefabricated, containerized, modular, skid-based, pod-based, mobile, portable, self-contained, all-in-one, and more. There are, however, important distinctions between the various types of factory-built building blocks on the market. This paper proposes standard terminology for categorizing the types of prefabricated modular data centers, defines and compares their key attributes, and provides a framework for choosing the best approach(es) based on business requirements.
The document discusses the utility and limitations of PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) as a metric for datacenter efficiency. While PUE is a widely used high-level metric, it does not provide enough information on its own to optimize efficiency. To enable effective efficiency actions, more detailed energy monitoring data is needed, including power consumption at the individual IT device level trended over time. Gathering additional operational data beyond just PUE can provide insights to reduce energy waste throughout the entire datacenter system.
The wide range of processes within the successful business, from planning to strategic implementation, requires accurate and ready information throughout. The cast of personnel involved across the business operation requires widely varying types of information to perform their assignments. In all, the successful business requires a powerful Business Intelligence technology.
Discussion covers the constitution and requirements of the effective Corporate Information Factory (CIF) Architecture. The Data Warehouse component of the CIF Architecture must be a flexible and reliable store of company information that allows a high degree of differentiation in data selection, modeling and analysis.
Next, the ETL processes — extract, transform and load — are responsible for accurately populating the Data Warehouse with information and enabling the use of this data. Again, differentiating methodologies, along with validating performance testing, must be accommodated.
Third, Business Intelligence tools for multi-dimensional analysis, budgeting and forecasting, efficient reporting, and data mining for enhanced insight assure the proper information is accessed for each specific business process. Developing and implementing the CIF Architecture involves definition of short-, medium-, and long-term objectives for the system as well as definition of the elements involved.
When a company implements a Business Intelligence technology, it is important that risk factors be identified and evaluated, including the scope and degree of difficulty of information integration, speed and adaptability, utility and practicality for the employee, and long-term effectiveness.
Schneider Electric Business Intelligence services are based on the company’s vast experience in helping organizations define their BI policies and develop their BI Architecture. It offers a productive competence center for consulting support, a proven product portfolio that allows efficient and effective development of specific BI solutions, and highly reliable technical assistance for specific needs or longer term. Several successful Business Intelligence technology solutions implemented by Schneider Electric are described.
Managing 'Big Data': Federal use cases for real-time data infrastructureSchneider Electric
OSIsoft's PI System - a software data infrastructure for real-time and event data is a necessary underpinning for monitoring, measurement, and incremental improvement in complex critical infrastructure environments. Hear about use cases and return on investment relevant to federal projects where energy management, operations optimization, and real-time situational awareness are priority goals.
Energy Event Index: Weather risk forecasts for power utilitiesSchneider Electric
Weather is the source of many of your most significant operational challenges. It not only causes outages that upset customers and inflicts damage to your infrastructure; it also impacts important decisions, such as offering mutual assistance to other organizations or requesting it for your own.
Weather-related outages are on the rise, increasing in frequency six fold over the last 20 years.* These outages cost the U.S. economy $20 to $55 billion a year.** When combined with increased staffing costs, leaner budgets, potential fines, and increased customer expectations and media scrutiny, the threat of outages makes managing weather events even more important.
To help you better anticipate these critical events and to understand their specific risks, at Schneider Electric, we offer our proven Energy Event Index forecasts. With them, you can make better-informed decisions that can save you significant expenses with mutual aid calls, and help avoid major public relations and regulatory headaches.
The document describes a plant information management system called DataMAX that provides comprehensive real-time and historical analysis of plant data. It offers enterprise-wide visibility of operations to enhance collaboration and decision-making. DataMAX provides a complete data management solution on a robust and versatile architecture to manage all plant floor data through a user-friendly interface. It redefines the role of a high-performance real-time historian and aims to align business and technical processes.
This document summarizes a job opportunity working as a sales person or cashier for Dubai Duty Free in Dubai, UAE. The job offers competitive pay of $750 per month, free housing and transportation, medical insurance, and the chance to gain international work experience. Candidates must be between 23-33 years old, have an intermediate English level, and pass a medical exam. The recruitment process involves submitting an online application, phone interview, and in-person interviews with the recruiting company and Dubai Duty Free. This is a legal opportunity to work abroad for 2 years with a reputable employer.
This document discusses the utility and limitations of PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) as a data center efficiency metric. While PUE is a useful high-level metric, it does not provide enough detail to optimize efficiency. PUE only measures the ratio of total facility power to IT equipment power, but does not account for factors like server utilization, resilience, or diversity of the IT load. The document argues that more detailed energy monitoring data is needed at the server, rack, and application level over time to properly evaluate efficiency and enable tangible efficiency actions.
Deerns Data Center Chameleon 20110913 V1.1euroamerican
The Chameleon Data Center was designed to dynamically adapt to meet changing business needs in terms of IT space, cooling, power and reliability tiers, while maintaining energy efficiency. It utilizes a unique combination of centralized and decentralized systems to deliver flexible IT power and cooling across a range of power densities, reliability tiers and capacities from the same infrastructure. This reduces upfront investment costs and allows customers to decide how to configure the data center space until equipment installation. The design achieves flexibility without additional costs through a modular infrastructure that can be easily adapted.
AspectCTRM is the only Web-based trade, risk and operations management solution.
Fuel Marketers can now benefit from this leading professional system with an efficient
and cost-effective way to manage streams of trading and transport activity. Traders, risk
managers, schedulers, procurement and back-office personnel rely on this comprehensive,
affordable solution.
The Mine Central Control Room: From Concept to Reality Schneider Electric
Presented at the 2013 Society of Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration Annual Meeting (SME 2013). The main concept of a central control room is the ability to gather and automatically transform information from different sources and mines into business decisions, centralizing and monitoring them from a single location. This central control room also acts as a complete repository of all business operations including mine planning, metrics, asset management, quality and process control, surveillance, sustainability data, emissions, energy efficiency projects, weather and more.
Unprecedented performance and scalability demonstrated for meter data management. The benchmark was performed at the IBM Power Systems Benchmark Center in Montpellier, France, on
a single IBM POWER7® system, utilizing 16 cores
Utilities are looking to adopt mobile solutions to increase efficiency and productivity, improve decision making, and reduce costs. Capgemini developed a mobile solution for Hydro One Networks to automate the mass replacement of over 1.2 million electrical meters across Ontario. The mobile solution streamlined the meter replacement process, allowing installations to be completed same-day instead of taking 2-3 weeks. The solution provided significant cost savings by digitizing the end-to-end process and enabling real-time monitoring and issue resolution. Mobile technologies provide benefits like faster completion of repetitive tasks, two-way information exchange, and integration with existing enterprise systems. Utilities must select solutions that are easy to use, flexible, durable, and support future needs and technology
1) Business continuity planning (BCP) involves maintaining business operations during disruptions through alternative sites, data backups, and emergency plans. It is important for banks to mitigate risks from hardware failures, natural disasters, and other events.
2) A BCP has several phases including initiation, analysis of business impacts, plan design and development, implementation, testing, and maintenance. It may involve alternatives like cold sites for future expansion or hot sites that are immediately available.
3) Performing a business impact analysis identifies critical systems and functions and their tolerance for downtime. It assists in risk assessment and prioritization of recovery needs. Data centers are important IT assets that require redundancy, reliability, security and environmental controls to ensure
The document discusses IBM's virtualization journey and the benefits of virtualization. It describes how virtualization can help consolidate resources, manage workloads more efficiently with a single management interface, and automate processes to improve IT agility and business responsiveness. Key steps in the virtualization journey include consolidation, management, automation, and optimization of IT infrastructure and workloads.
How Test Labs Reduce Cyber Security Threats to Industrial Control Systemse cy...Schneider Electric
Federal agencies are moving their industrial control systems (ICS) from operational business networks to separate, dedicated networks in order to enhance security. However, without a system to test the new equipment and software coming into these separate networks, security risks will persist. This paper explores the impact on security of instituting a sanctioned ICS test lab and recommends best practices for setting up and operating these labs.
Datacenter Transformation - Energy And Availability - Dio Van Der ArendHPDutchWorld
(1) Datacenters are facing increasing demands that many current facilities cannot meet, requiring transformation through consolidation, virtualization, and improved energy efficiency and availability.
(2) Datacenter designs are evolving from small, isolated IT islands to larger, standardized facilities with improved reliability through redundant critical systems and failover capabilities.
(3) Next generation datacenter designs focus on high power density, energy efficiency through technologies like containerization, and rapid deployment in multiple locations for business flexibility.
IT Authorities implemented the Nimsoft Monitoring Solution (NMS) as its core monitoring platform to address the challenges of demonstrating more value to clients and meeting the needs of its growing business. NMS provides unified monitoring across client infrastructures through customizable portal views. This enables greater insight into critical systems and applications. NMS also scales to support both smaller and larger accounts, allowing IT Authorities to secure new business and meet evolving client needs through sophisticated monitoring capabilities.
The document discusses optimizing facility efficiency in federal mission-critical environments. It recommends taking a long-term approach to planning by understanding organizational goals and bridging IT and facilities. Key steps include assessing existing facilities, selecting efficient equipment, right-sizing capacity, and establishing monitoring, maintenance, and benchmarking programs to ensure optimization over time. Regular maintenance is emphasized as critical for sustained efficiency gains and reliability.
The document provides a five-step process for planning a new data center: 1) Determine design parameters like capacity, budget, growth plan, etc. 2) Develop a system concept by selecting a reference design. 3) Determine user requirements like preferences and constraints. 4) Generate a specification. 5) Generate a construction design. It emphasizes involving the right stakeholders, communicating at the right level of abstraction, and avoiding common mistakes like poor budgeting or an IT-focused rather than business-focused design. Following the standardized process can help complete projects on time and on budget by eliminating potential pitfalls.
Data center systems or subsystems that are pre-assembled in a factory are often described with terms like prefabricated, containerized, modular, skid-based, pod-based, mobile, portable, self-contained, all-in-one, and more. There are, however, important distinctions between the various types of factory-built building blocks on the market. This paper proposes standard terminology for categorizing the types of prefabricated modular data centers, defines and compares their key attributes, and provides a framework for choosing the best approach(es) based on business requirements.
The document discusses the utility and limitations of PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) as a metric for datacenter efficiency. While PUE is a widely used high-level metric, it does not provide enough information on its own to optimize efficiency. To enable effective efficiency actions, more detailed energy monitoring data is needed, including power consumption at the individual IT device level trended over time. Gathering additional operational data beyond just PUE can provide insights to reduce energy waste throughout the entire datacenter system.
The wide range of processes within the successful business, from planning to strategic implementation, requires accurate and ready information throughout. The cast of personnel involved across the business operation requires widely varying types of information to perform their assignments. In all, the successful business requires a powerful Business Intelligence technology.
Discussion covers the constitution and requirements of the effective Corporate Information Factory (CIF) Architecture. The Data Warehouse component of the CIF Architecture must be a flexible and reliable store of company information that allows a high degree of differentiation in data selection, modeling and analysis.
Next, the ETL processes — extract, transform and load — are responsible for accurately populating the Data Warehouse with information and enabling the use of this data. Again, differentiating methodologies, along with validating performance testing, must be accommodated.
Third, Business Intelligence tools for multi-dimensional analysis, budgeting and forecasting, efficient reporting, and data mining for enhanced insight assure the proper information is accessed for each specific business process. Developing and implementing the CIF Architecture involves definition of short-, medium-, and long-term objectives for the system as well as definition of the elements involved.
When a company implements a Business Intelligence technology, it is important that risk factors be identified and evaluated, including the scope and degree of difficulty of information integration, speed and adaptability, utility and practicality for the employee, and long-term effectiveness.
Schneider Electric Business Intelligence services are based on the company’s vast experience in helping organizations define their BI policies and develop their BI Architecture. It offers a productive competence center for consulting support, a proven product portfolio that allows efficient and effective development of specific BI solutions, and highly reliable technical assistance for specific needs or longer term. Several successful Business Intelligence technology solutions implemented by Schneider Electric are described.
Managing 'Big Data': Federal use cases for real-time data infrastructureSchneider Electric
OSIsoft's PI System - a software data infrastructure for real-time and event data is a necessary underpinning for monitoring, measurement, and incremental improvement in complex critical infrastructure environments. Hear about use cases and return on investment relevant to federal projects where energy management, operations optimization, and real-time situational awareness are priority goals.
Energy Event Index: Weather risk forecasts for power utilitiesSchneider Electric
Weather is the source of many of your most significant operational challenges. It not only causes outages that upset customers and inflicts damage to your infrastructure; it also impacts important decisions, such as offering mutual assistance to other organizations or requesting it for your own.
Weather-related outages are on the rise, increasing in frequency six fold over the last 20 years.* These outages cost the U.S. economy $20 to $55 billion a year.** When combined with increased staffing costs, leaner budgets, potential fines, and increased customer expectations and media scrutiny, the threat of outages makes managing weather events even more important.
To help you better anticipate these critical events and to understand their specific risks, at Schneider Electric, we offer our proven Energy Event Index forecasts. With them, you can make better-informed decisions that can save you significant expenses with mutual aid calls, and help avoid major public relations and regulatory headaches.
The document describes a plant information management system called DataMAX that provides comprehensive real-time and historical analysis of plant data. It offers enterprise-wide visibility of operations to enhance collaboration and decision-making. DataMAX provides a complete data management solution on a robust and versatile architecture to manage all plant floor data through a user-friendly interface. It redefines the role of a high-performance real-time historian and aims to align business and technical processes.
This document summarizes a job opportunity working as a sales person or cashier for Dubai Duty Free in Dubai, UAE. The job offers competitive pay of $750 per month, free housing and transportation, medical insurance, and the chance to gain international work experience. Candidates must be between 23-33 years old, have an intermediate English level, and pass a medical exam. The recruitment process involves submitting an online application, phone interview, and in-person interviews with the recruiting company and Dubai Duty Free. This is a legal opportunity to work abroad for 2 years with a reputable employer.
Introduction, advantages of electronic instrumentation, instrument classifica...Engr Ali Mouzam
This document provides an introduction to instrumentation. It defines instrumentation as the study of various instruments and their control. An instrument is a device that measures a physical or electrical quantity. Measurement is a quantitative comparison between a standard and an unknown quantity. Electronic instrumentation has advantages like easy conversion of signals, amplification, and compatibility with computers. Instruments can be classified based on their functioning, such as active vs passive, analog vs digital, or absolute vs secondary. Measurement can be direct, measuring the target quantity, or indirect, measuring a related parameter.
This document provides an introduction to various types of measuring instruments, including ammeters, voltmeters, multimeters, oscilloscopes, wattmeters, tachometers, signal generators, and LCR meters. Ammeters measure electrical current, voltmeters measure potential difference, and multimeters can measure voltage, current, and resistance. Oscilloscopes observe exact wave shapes, wattmeters measure electrical power, and tachometers measure rotational speed. Signal generators create electronic signals, and LCR meters measure inductance, capacitance, and resistance of components.
This document provides information on electrical and electronics instruments that can be measured by multimeters. It begins by defining a multimeter as an electronic measuring instrument that can measure voltage, current, and resistance. It describes the principles and types of analog and digital instruments. Specific instruments that can be measured include voltmeters, ammeters, wattmeters, energy meters, and instruments for measuring frequency and phase. The history of multimeter development is also summarized.
1. Indicating instruments measure electrical quantities by deflecting a pointer on a calibrated scale. They use a deflection system to produce a force proportional to the measured value, a control system to limit deflection, and a damping system to prevent oscillations.
2. Permanent magnet moving coil (PMMC) instruments have a coil mounted between magnet poles that deflects proportional to current. They are used as ammeters, voltmeters, and galvanometers. As an ammeter, the coil is connected across a low resistance shunt; as a voltmeter, it is connected in series with a high resistance.
3. Moving iron instruments can measure AC using an iron core acted on by a coil
This presentation by Hooria Shahzad is about measuring instruments in which we study metre rule, measuring tape, vernier callipers and screw gauge ; construction of vernier callipers and screw gauge.
Robert McFarlane deconstructs DCIM tools' role in the enterpriseAbhishek Sood
The document discusses the background and role of data center infrastructure management (DCIM) tools. It describes DCIM tools as software suites that collect data from IT and facilities infrastructure to monitor capacity, power, cooling, space, and assets. It outlines nine key capabilities of DCIM tools, including energy monitoring, environmental monitoring, asset management, and capacity planning. Finally, it explains that effective DCIM tools provide centralized monitoring and management of both facilities and IT aspects of an organization's data centers.
This document discusses the challenges of managing data center assets and how data center infrastructure management (DCIM) software can help address them. It describes how DCIM software provides visibility into diverse IT assets and their complex interdependencies. It also explains that DCIM software can help with budgeting, capacity planning, impact analysis, and other key data center management tasks. The document advocates for a comprehensive single-vendor DCIM solution rather than multiple specialized point tools.
The document discusses how data center infrastructure management (DCIM) software can help with operations, planning, and analytics for data centers. It provides examples of common issues that can occur without DCIM tools, such as accidentally overloading circuits or racks. The cheat sheet also lists questions that DCIM tools can answer, such as identifying hot spots or excess capacity. DCIM software allows monitoring of equipment power usage, generating audit trails, and calculating power usage effectiveness. It enables more efficient provisioning, load balancing, and capacity planning to optimize data center resources.
As a leading Managed service provider with datacenters in India, Netmagic solutions, fulfills your entire IT infrastructure requirements: from collocation services to backup solutions.
This document provides an overview of a fastrack distribution management system (DMS) pilot implementation approach for utilities. The approach involves four phases: Build, where a subset of the utility's network is modeled; Learn, where the model is evaluated; Plan, where future goals and strategies are identified; and Execute, where the DMS software is deployed. The pilot helps utilities demonstrate DMS benefits, better understand their data needs, and build support for further smart grid projects.
What is Data Center Management_ - Modius _ DCIM - Data Center Infrastructure ...hrutikeshAnpat
An organization’s set of responsibilities and operations for managing a data center is referred to as data center management.
Data centers are highly complex, with numerous moving pieces that must all operate together to serve the business and its customers. In addition, many different technical and non-technical disciplines are required for the data center to work optimally.
Data center operations managers can use DCIM software to identify quickly, locate, visualize, and manage all physical data center assets, provision new equipment, and confidently plan capacity for future growth.
The document discusses how virtualization can help organizations achieve maximum value through improved power efficiency, reliability, and more integrated systems. It notes that digital data is growing exponentially and many companies will need to modify their data centers to handle this growth. Virtualization can help organizations reduce costs, improve service delivery, and better manage risk by consolidating servers, storage, and networking infrastructure. When combined with integrated service management tools, virtualization provides improved visibility, control, and automation of IT resources.
This document discusses how hyperscale infrastructure approaches can enable enterprises to meet increasing future IT capacity needs with lower costs than traditional IT approaches. It describes how leading cloud providers have developed hyperscale computing models internally to dramatically improve efficiency and performance. The document proposes that operators and enterprises can adopt similar hyperscale infrastructure using disaggregated hardware architectures, which standardize components, abstract complexity, automate processes, and allow perpetual refresh of parts rather than entire systems. This would enable lower total cost of ownership through improvements like high utilization rates, reduced energy consumption, and eliminating forced hardware replacement cycles.
As the Vice President, Datacenter Architecture at Presidio, William Turner, PhD has more than 20 years of hands-on, full-project-cycle experience in strategizing, designing and deploying large-scale Fortune 500 networks and security solutions. His extensive background in banking, security,
and government has yielded several well regarded industry standards and noted reference models.
Dr. Turner envisions and drives a future in which sophisticated software provisions and de-provisions IT infrastructure automatically in response to business needs. The specialized appliances enterprises traditionally rely upon will be replaced by industry-standard hardware playing necessary roles on demand.
EAPJ conducted this interview from the perspective of an infrastructure architect considering a software-defined future for the networking, hosting and storage underlying a major upcoming application investment.
Thought Leader Interview: Dr. William Turner on the Software-Defined Future ...Iver Band
As the Vice President, Datacenter Architecture at Presidio,
William Turner, PhD has more than 20 years of hand-son,
full-project-cycle experience in strategizing, designing and
deploying large-scale Fortune 500 networks and security
solutions. His extensive background in banking, security,
and government has yielded several well regarded industry
standards and noted reference models.
Dr. Turner envisions and drives a future in which sophisticated software provisions and de-provisions IT infrastructure automatically in response to business needs. The specialized appliances enterprises traditionally rely upon will be replaced by industry-standard hardware playing necessary roles on demand.
EAPJ conducted this interview from the perspective of an infrastructure architect considering a software-defined future for the networking, hosting and storage underlying a
major upcoming application investment.
An architacture for modular datacenterJunaid Kabir
This document proposes a new architecture for modular data centers using standard shipping containers. It argues that fully populating shipping containers with thousands of commodity servers and delivering them as ready-to-run modules could significantly reduce data center costs through lower acquisition, deployment, and management costs compared to individual servers. This approach aims to address challenges from the rapid growth of internet services relying on large numbers of inexpensive, commodity servers in data centers.
In medicine - an MRI can quickly reveal a hidden ailment and actionable insight to get better. For IT and business leaders whose key concern with the mainframe is the platform costs and lean operations - the CA Mainframe Resource Intelligene reveals multiple sources of hidden mainframe costs and operational inefficiencies along with actionable recommendations.View this slideshare to understand how this new SaaS offering from CA brings together automation, speed, analytics and mainframe expertise of 40+ years. CA Mainframe Resource Intelligence reports answer your CIO’s toughest questions about mainframe optimization and potential for digital transformation.
For more information, please contact your account director or mainframe specialist at:
http://ow.ly/PALG50htHgF
This document provides an introduction to IT infrastructure management. It discusses key concepts like information technology, IT infrastructure, challenges in managing IT infrastructure, and determining customer requirements. It also describes the IT systems management process and IT service management process. Finally, it discusses information system design process and some responsibilities and roles within IT.
Modular blade server architectures address many challenges facing modern data centers by consolidating computing components into smaller, modular form factors that share resources to lower costs and complexity. Blades can satisfy computing needs for servers, desktops, networking and storage. They provide world-class solutions by delivering high performance, reliability, efficiency and scalability without disruption. Proper planning is required, but blade servers are highly efficient platforms for consolidating distributed servers into a common data center through their small size and ability to maximize resource utilization through virtualization.
This document outlines an agenda for a DCIM Meetup event on February 13th, 2014 in the Bay Area, California. The agenda includes: an introduction to data center infrastructure management (DCIM) and how it provides centralized monitoring and management of data centers; challenges in data centers and how DCIM supports automation and high availability; a case study on how OpManager was used to replace multiple monitoring tools at a large company; and a demonstration of OpManager's features for monitoring servers, networks, applications and integrating with other IT tools.
In this presentation we will be discussing the business benefits for data centre power and environmental monitoring and practical steps you can take to reduce risk and increase efficiency. Richard May bio.: Richard May is the Data Centre Power SME and Country Manager for Raritan UKI and Nordics. With over 17 years’ data centre experience, specialising in rack monitoring, metering and control, Richard works to support Raritan customers and partners; helping to maximise the efficiency of their existing data centres, and developing strategies for their new facilities.
WP107 How Data Center Management Software Improves Planning and Cuts OPEXSE_NAM_Training
Modern data center infrastructure management software tools can help simplify operations, cut costs, and speed up information delivery in three key ways:
1. Planning tools simulate the impact of infrastructure changes to help with capacity planning and ensure redundancy.
2. Operations tools provide rapid impact analysis when issues arise and can proactively prevent downtime.
3. Analytics tools leverage historical data to identify strengths and weaknesses to improve future performance.
An Architecture for Modular Data Centersguest640c7d
This document proposes a new architecture for modular data centers using standard shipping containers. The key points are:
1) Shipping containers can house thousands of commodity server components and be delivered as fully operational modules, eliminating the need for on-site assembly and maintenance.
2) These container modules reduce costs associated with component shipping, installation, power/cooling infrastructure, and hardware administration over the lifetime of the systems.
3) The modular approach provides flexibility to rapidly deploy new capacity globally and to later relocate data centers cost-effectively if needed.
Lee Barnes - Path to Becoming an Effective Test Automation Engineer.pdfleebarnesutopia
So… you want to become a Test Automation Engineer (or hire and develop one)? While there’s quite a bit of information available about important technical and tool skills to master, there’s not enough discussion around the path to becoming an effective Test Automation Engineer that knows how to add VALUE. In my experience this had led to a proliferation of engineers who are proficient with tools and building frameworks but have skill and knowledge gaps, especially in software testing, that reduce the value they deliver with test automation.
In this talk, Lee will share his lessons learned from over 30 years of working with, and mentoring, hundreds of Test Automation Engineers. Whether you’re looking to get started in test automation or just want to improve your trade, this talk will give you a solid foundation and roadmap for ensuring your test automation efforts continuously add value. This talk is equally valuable for both aspiring Test Automation Engineers and those managing them! All attendees will take away a set of key foundational knowledge and a high-level learning path for leveling up test automation skills and ensuring they add value to their organizations.
Essentials of Automations: Exploring Attributes & Automation ParametersSafe Software
Building automations in FME Flow can save time, money, and help businesses scale by eliminating data silos and providing data to stakeholders in real-time. One essential component to orchestrating complex automations is the use of attributes & automation parameters (both formerly known as “keys”). In fact, it’s unlikely you’ll ever build an Automation without using these components, but what exactly are they?
Attributes & automation parameters enable the automation author to pass data values from one automation component to the next. During this webinar, our FME Flow Specialists will cover leveraging the three types of these output attributes & parameters in FME Flow: Event, Custom, and Automation. As a bonus, they’ll also be making use of the Split-Merge Block functionality.
You’ll leave this webinar with a better understanding of how to maximize the potential of automations by making use of attributes & automation parameters, with the ultimate goal of setting your enterprise integration workflows up on autopilot.
As AI technology is pushing into IT I was wondering myself, as an “infrastructure container kubernetes guy”, how get this fancy AI technology get managed from an infrastructure operational view? Is it possible to apply our lovely cloud native principals as well? What benefit’s both technologies could bring to each other?
Let me take this questions and provide you a short journey through existing deployment models and use cases for AI software. On practical examples, we discuss what cloud/on-premise strategy we may need for applying it to our own infrastructure to get it to work from an enterprise perspective. I want to give an overview about infrastructure requirements and technologies, what could be beneficial or limiting your AI use cases in an enterprise environment. An interactive Demo will give you some insides, what approaches I got already working for real.
Keywords: AI, Containeres, Kubernetes, Cloud Native
Event Link: https://meine.doag.org/events/cloudland/2024/agenda/#agendaId.4211
LF Energy Webinar: Carbon Data Specifications: Mechanisms to Improve Data Acc...DanBrown980551
This LF Energy webinar took place June 20, 2024. It featured:
-Alex Thornton, LF Energy
-Hallie Cramer, Google
-Daniel Roesler, UtilityAPI
-Henry Richardson, WattTime
In response to the urgency and scale required to effectively address climate change, open source solutions offer significant potential for driving innovation and progress. Currently, there is a growing demand for standardization and interoperability in energy data and modeling. Open source standards and specifications within the energy sector can also alleviate challenges associated with data fragmentation, transparency, and accessibility. At the same time, it is crucial to consider privacy and security concerns throughout the development of open source platforms.
This webinar will delve into the motivations behind establishing LF Energy’s Carbon Data Specification Consortium. It will provide an overview of the draft specifications and the ongoing progress made by the respective working groups.
Three primary specifications will be discussed:
-Discovery and client registration, emphasizing transparent processes and secure and private access
-Customer data, centering around customer tariffs, bills, energy usage, and full consumption disclosure
-Power systems data, focusing on grid data, inclusive of transmission and distribution networks, generation, intergrid power flows, and market settlement data
Dandelion Hashtable: beyond billion requests per second on a commodity serverAntonios Katsarakis
This slide deck presents DLHT, a concurrent in-memory hashtable. Despite efforts to optimize hashtables, that go as far as sacrificing core functionality, state-of-the-art designs still incur multiple memory accesses per request and block request processing in three cases. First, most hashtables block while waiting for data to be retrieved from memory. Second, open-addressing designs, which represent the current state-of-the-art, either cannot free index slots on deletes or must block all requests to do so. Third, index resizes block every request until all objects are copied to the new index. Defying folklore wisdom, DLHT forgoes open-addressing and adopts a fully-featured and memory-aware closed-addressing design based on bounded cache-line-chaining. This design offers lock-free index operations and deletes that free slots instantly, (2) completes most requests with a single memory access, (3) utilizes software prefetching to hide memory latencies, and (4) employs a novel non-blocking and parallel resizing. In a commodity server and a memory-resident workload, DLHT surpasses 1.6B requests per second and provides 3.5x (12x) the throughput of the state-of-the-art closed-addressing (open-addressing) resizable hashtable on Gets (Deletes).
The Microsoft 365 Migration Tutorial For Beginner.pptxoperationspcvita
This presentation will help you understand the power of Microsoft 365. However, we have mentioned every productivity app included in Office 365. Additionally, we have suggested the migration situation related to Office 365 and how we can help you.
You can also read: https://www.systoolsgroup.com/updates/office-365-tenant-to-tenant-migration-step-by-step-complete-guide/
"Frontline Battles with DDoS: Best practices and Lessons Learned", Igor IvaniukFwdays
At this talk we will discuss DDoS protection tools and best practices, discuss network architectures and what AWS has to offer. Also, we will look into one of the largest DDoS attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure that happened in February 2022. We'll see, what techniques helped to keep the web resources available for Ukrainians and how AWS improved DDoS protection for all customers based on Ukraine experience
[OReilly Superstream] Occupy the Space: A grassroots guide to engineering (an...Jason Yip
The typical problem in product engineering is not bad strategy, so much as “no strategy”. This leads to confusion, lack of motivation, and incoherent action. The next time you look for a strategy and find an empty space, instead of waiting for it to be filled, I will show you how to fill it in yourself. If you’re wrong, it forces a correction. If you’re right, it helps create focus. I’ll share how I’ve approached this in the past, both what works and lessons for what didn’t work so well.
Conversational agents, or chatbots, are increasingly used to access all sorts of services using natural language. While open-domain chatbots - like ChatGPT - can converse on any topic, task-oriented chatbots - the focus of this paper - are designed for specific tasks, like booking a flight, obtaining customer support, or setting an appointment. Like any other software, task-oriented chatbots need to be properly tested, usually by defining and executing test scenarios (i.e., sequences of user-chatbot interactions). However, there is currently a lack of methods to quantify the completeness and strength of such test scenarios, which can lead to low-quality tests, and hence to buggy chatbots.
To fill this gap, we propose adapting mutation testing (MuT) for task-oriented chatbots. To this end, we introduce a set of mutation operators that emulate faults in chatbot designs, an architecture that enables MuT on chatbots built using heterogeneous technologies, and a practical realisation as an Eclipse plugin. Moreover, we evaluate the applicability, effectiveness and efficiency of our approach on open-source chatbots, with promising results.
What is an RPA CoE? Session 1 – CoE VisionDianaGray10
In the first session, we will review the organization's vision and how this has an impact on the COE Structure.
Topics covered:
• The role of a steering committee
• How do the organization’s priorities determine CoE Structure?
Speaker:
Chris Bolin, Senior Intelligent Automation Architect Anika Systems
Must Know Postgres Extension for DBA and Developer during MigrationMydbops
Mydbops Opensource Database Meetup 16
Topic: Must-Know PostgreSQL Extensions for Developers and DBAs During Migration
Speaker: Deepak Mahto, Founder of DataCloudGaze Consulting
Date & Time: 8th June | 10 AM - 1 PM IST
Venue: Bangalore International Centre, Bangalore
Abstract: Discover how PostgreSQL extensions can be your secret weapon! This talk explores how key extensions enhance database capabilities and streamline the migration process for users moving from other relational databases like Oracle.
Key Takeaways:
* Learn about crucial extensions like oracle_fdw, pgtt, and pg_audit that ease migration complexities.
* Gain valuable strategies for implementing these extensions in PostgreSQL to achieve license freedom.
* Discover how these key extensions can empower both developers and DBAs during the migration process.
* Don't miss this chance to gain practical knowledge from an industry expert and stay updated on the latest open-source database trends.
Mydbops Managed Services specializes in taking the pain out of database management while optimizing performance. Since 2015, we have been providing top-notch support and assistance for the top three open-source databases: MySQL, MongoDB, and PostgreSQL.
Our team offers a wide range of services, including assistance, support, consulting, 24/7 operations, and expertise in all relevant technologies. We help organizations improve their database's performance, scalability, efficiency, and availability.
Contact us: info@mydbops.com
Visit: https://www.mydbops.com/
Follow us on LinkedIn: https://in.linkedin.com/company/mydbops
For more details and updates, please follow up the below links.
Meetup Page : https://www.meetup.com/mydbops-databa...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mydbopsofficial
Blogs: https://www.mydbops.com/blog/
Facebook(Meta): https://www.facebook.com/mydbops/
Northern Engraving | Nameplate Manufacturing Process - 2024Northern Engraving
Manufacturing custom quality metal nameplates and badges involves several standard operations. Processes include sheet prep, lithography, screening, coating, punch press and inspection. All decoration is completed in the flat sheet with adhesive and tooling operations following. The possibilities for creating unique durable nameplates are endless. How will you create your brand identity? We can help!
"$10 thousand per minute of downtime: architecture, queues, streaming and fin...Fwdays
Direct losses from downtime in 1 minute = $5-$10 thousand dollars. Reputation is priceless.
As part of the talk, we will consider the architectural strategies necessary for the development of highly loaded fintech solutions. We will focus on using queues and streaming to efficiently work and manage large amounts of data in real-time and to minimize latency.
We will focus special attention on the architectural patterns used in the design of the fintech system, microservices and event-driven architecture, which ensure scalability, fault tolerance, and consistency of the entire system.
"$10 thousand per minute of downtime: architecture, queues, streaming and fin...
StruxureWare DCIM Q&A
1. Business-wise, Future-drivenTM
Data Centers
FAQs on data center management software
According to the Uptime Institute, the market for data center infrastructure management systems will grow from
$500 Million in 2010 to $7.5 Billion by 2020.
Q: Why? A: Because data center managers and execs have concluded that improving physical infrastructure
planning and management can save significant amounts in energy, capital, and operational costs.
Modern data center physical infrastructure (i.e., power and cooling) management software tools respond to the constant
capacity changes and dynamic loads of new “agile” data centers, and provide visibility that allows organizations to plan
effectively, operate at lower cost, and analyze for workflow improvement. The following are the most FAQs that we hear
around the topic of DCIM.
Q: What is DCIM, and why would I need it?
Q: What are the primary types of DCIM software, and what do they do?
Q: Practically speaking, what do these two types of DCIM software do?
Q: Is DCIM just about software?
Q: How do older generations of infrastructure management tools differ from more recent versions?
Q: What are some common scenarios that DCIM tools can help avoid?
Q: What can DCIM tools do to help manage energy consumption in my data center?
Q: How does a high-density or highly virtualized environment affect the need for management?
Q: How do I evaluate DCIM solutions? What features/functions do I look for?
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2. Business-wise, Future-drivenTM
Data Centers
Q: What is DCIM, and why would I need it?
A: DCIM (data center infrastructure management) is a combination of software, hardware and sensors that allows you
to monitor, optimize and intelligently plan power and cooling capacity in your data center. DCIM tools have become
essential as the availability and operating costs of the data center have become increasingly intertwined with the facility.
(return to top)
Q: What are the primary types of DCIM software, and what do they do?
A: There are two main categories of data center management software tools: monitoring/automation software and
planning/implementation software.
The first deals with monitoring and automation of the IT room and facility power, environmental control, and security. It
acts upon user-set thresholds by alarming, logging, or even controlling physical devices, and does things like verifying
the data center is functioning as designed, and automating activities that optimize availability and efficiency.
The second category of software focuses on planning and implementation, where IT managers can typically have
the greatest impact on total cost of ownership (TCO). It ensures efficient deployment of new equipment, organizes
planning in order to facilitate changes in the data center, tracks assets, and simulates the impact of all kinds of “what-if”
scenarios. (return to top)
Q: Practically speaking, what do these two types of DCIM software do?
A: Monitoring and automation software can do things like:
• Provide energy use details that enable the linking of operating costs to each business unit user group, which
then allows for “charge backs”
• Monitor and control facility heat, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, as well as fire, water,
steam, and gas systems, and facility security
• Perform auto discovery of new equipment additions, verifying that everything works out of the box
• Report real-time, average and peak power usage by rack, which might help you decide where to add a new
server or identify and eliminate recurring and possibly dangerous load spikes
• Measure power usage effectiveness (PUE) on a daily basis and track historical PUE, helping you analyze
whether cost cutting and energy saving strategies are actually working.
Planning and implementation software can do things like:
• Generate inventory reports organized by device type, age, manufacturer, and properties of the device (handy
to quickly identify underutilized assets, assets out of warranty, and assets that need to be upgraded)
• Generate an audit trail for changes to assets and work orders, including a record of alarms raised and
alarms removed, providing factual evidence for post-failure analysisPerform auto discovery of new
equipment additions, verifying that everything works out of the box
• Map out what-if scenarios, such as: if I change the contents of this rack, how will it impact my cooling?
Measure power usage effectiveness (PUE) on a daily basis and track historical PUE, helping you analyze
whether cost cutting and energy saving strategies are actually working.
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The Brands You Trust.
3. Business-wise, Future-drivenTM
Data Centers
• Answer questions such as:
- What is my data center’s PUE?
- What is the optimal place to put my next physical or virtual server?
- What will the impact of new equipment be on my redundancy and safety margins? (return to top)
Q: Is DCIM just about software?
A: No, DCIM tools consist of a collection of software applications (outlined above), data collection tools, and a
dashboard. The data collection is generally done by devices like meters, power protection devices, embedded cards,
programmable logic controllers (PLCs), and sensors, which gather data and forward it to management software for
processing.
The other component of DCIM is a dashboard. Critical information from the DCIM software and data collection
tools needs to be aggregated and presented so IT managers can visualize the data in a way that is meaningful and
actionable. Dashboards can be configured for different needs, for instance to focus on the performance of the IT
equipment versus the physical infrastructure (cooling, power, security). (return to top)
Q: How do older generations of infrastructure management tools differ
from more recent versions?
A: Early physical infrastructure management tools were limited in scope and required considerable human intervention.
While they would warn that a particular parameter had been exceeded, the operator would have to determine what
equipment was affected by the error. First-gen tools could not make correlations between a physical infrastructure
device and a server, nor were they capable of initiating actions to prevent downtime, such as speeding up fans to
dissipate a hot spot.
Newer management tools are designed to identify and resolve issues with minimum human intervention. By correlating
power, cooling and space resources to individual servers (physical and virtual), DCIM tools today can proactively inform
IT management systems of potential physical infrastructure problems and how they might impact specific IT loads.
Newer planning software tools illustrate, through a graphical user interface, the current physical state of the data center
and simulate the effect of future physical equipment adds, moves, and failures. (return to top)
Q: What are some common scenarios that DCIM tools can help avoid?
A: Here are a few we see more often than we’d like:
• A rack of servers loses power when an IT administrator unintentionally overloads an already maxed-out
power strip.
• A large data center virtualizes and consolidates its most critical applications on a cluster of servers. Using
the failover mechanism of the virtualization platform, they feel protected from hardware failure. Unfortunately,
in their planning, they don’t recognize that each of the servers is dependent on the same UPS, which means
that if the UPS fails, no UPS-protected servers are available to migrate the affected loads to.
• An operator is trying to determine whether power capacity that was just exceeded on a rack is only an
anomaly or a developing trend. She goes on “gut feel” and leaves it alone. The next time power capacity
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4. Business-wise, Future-drivenTM
Data Centers
in that rack is exceeded, a breaker trips and all the servers downstream of that breaker that are running
mission critical applications are suddenly shut down.
• In a large, mission critical data center, the provisioning and installation of servers is so complex that only
highly paid contract engineers are able to perform the task. (return to top)
Q: What can DCIM tools do to help manage energy consumption in my
data center?
A: Newer DCIM tools measure, monitor, automate, and optimize processes for energy efficiency. They can do things
like:
• Initiate load shifts: for example, when a monitoring system detects a reduced data center load at night,
it might consolidate applications onto rack #1 and turn off rack #2, saving energy. In addition, if the reduced
IT load can operate at a higher temperature, variable speed fans in CRACS can be adjusted down, and the
reduced cooling load would be reported to the building management system (BMS), which optimizes the
chiller by raising the chilled water temperature, saving more energy.
• Maximize use of existing capacity: DCIM tools help identify excess capacity and pinpoint devices that
can either be decommissioned or used elsewhere, saving on energy, capital, maintenance, and
manpower costs. DCIM tools also help identify stranded capacity, or unusable capacity caused by an
imbalance in power, cooling, and/or rack space.Map out what-if scenarios, such as: if I change the contents
of this rack, how will it impact my cooling?Measure power usage effectiveness (PUE) on a daily basis and
track historical PUE, helping you analyze whether cost cutting and energy saving strategies are actually
working.
• Measure power usage effectiveness (PUE): DCIM tools track daily and historical PUE, helping you analyze
whether cost cutting and energy saving strategies are actually working and make adjustments accordingly.
(return to top)
Q: How does a high-density or highly virtualized environment affect the
need for management?
A: With multiple virtual machines and applications running on any single host, the health and availability of each physical
machine becomes that much more critical, and that’s where DCIM tools play a vital role in ensuring adequate power
and cooling. The other consideration is the intensive and constantly changing power and cooling requirements of a
virtual environment – dynamics loads simply can’t be responded to manually. (return to top)
Q: How do I evaluate DCIM solutions? What features/functions do I
look for?ypes of DCIM software, and what do they do?
A: There are many DCIM tools and suites of solutions on the market, and as with any acquisition, you need to look at
each critically and choose the one that best meets your specific needs. Some features/functions to consider:
Open source – vendor-neutrality is key, as very few data centers are standardized on a single vendor from top
to bottom. Open source DCIM software can integrate data from, for example, uninterruptible power supply (UPS)
systems, power distribution units (PDUs), and cooling units from three (or more) different vendors.
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5. Business-wise, Future-drivenTM
Data Centers
In addition, with open protocols, it is quite easy to add additional software tools and expect them to communicate
and work together effectively.
Functionality – depending on your needs, you’ll want to explore various functions:
• Planning functions, such as asset management and cause/effect analysis
• Operational functions, such as helping to complete more tasks in less time, reducing human error, and
identifying root causes of problems
• Analysis functions, such as identifying operational strengths and weaknesses and optimizing energy usage
User interfaces – different packages offer different views, so choose those that would be most useful to you.
Among those typically available:
• Floor layout: provides an accurate representation of your data center in a floor plan and/or elevation diagram
• Recommended actions: Provides descriptions of problems and recommended actions
• Virtual store room: Keeps track of new devices from arrival on site through installation
• Rack front view: Provides accurate graphical representation of equipment and its location in the rack
• Equipment browser: Locates equipment based on vendor name, model and/or type, and can often export
equipment data to Excel format
• User rights management: Allows assignment of individual user rights and controls across rooms, locations,
reports, alarms, and work orders
• Mobile devices: Communicates critical data to specified PDAs (return to top)
CONCLUSION For more information, visit our library of white
papers, with navigation guide or browse our
DCIM tools are critical to any data center manager’s success collection of interactive tools to help you plan and
in effectively planning and operating a data center. manage your data center. For more information
on DCIM, see white paper #107 “How Data Center
Infrastructure Management Software Improves
Planning and Cuts Operational Costs.”
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