AFCO Joins DCIM Players

Are you evaluating Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) systems? If so, you need to understand what you’re looking to “see” and what you’re looking to “control.”  In other words, what do you want the DCIM software to tell you?

Among the things DCIM systems can help you see environmentally are computer room air conditioners (CRACs) and computer room air handlers (CRAHs), cooling, power draw, and the effect of these systems on the temperature in your data center environment.

If you look at the issues DCIM covers–environmental and power management, the use of floor space in your data center and the nature of how you are populating your data center–you can draw a straight line to your enclosures.  Your critical technology and applications live there, and it’s where cooling is most required.  Monitoring down to the enclosure level is vital to the health of your data center.

DCIM is defined by Gartner as the integration of information technology (IT) and facility management controls to centralize monitoring, management and intelligent capacity planning of a data center’s critical systems.

Furthermore, Gartner predicts a 60 percent market penetration of DCIM by 2014.  This increase will be driven by increased power and heat density, data center consolidation, virtualization and cloud computing, they say.

The concept of the DCIM effort makes a lot of sense.  And the goal is achieved through the implementation of specialized software, hardware and sensors.  Correctly accomplished, DCIM enables a single real-time monitoring and management platform for all interdependent systems across IT and facility infrastructures.

Feedback from DCIM systems users confirms that it can significantly improve data center reliability and efficiency.  In addition to simplified and streamlined capacity planning, DCIM adds efficiency, flexibility, economy and comprehensive power monitoring that ensures the security and resilience of your data center.  DCIM systems enable users to understand overall energy efficiency and discover opportunities for recapturing power, cooling and space capacity.

Data center managers are demanding greater insight into the complex environments they manage.  As stated above, such monitoring should go all the way down to the enclosure level. DCIM provides the granular power monitoring needed to optimize power systems and report detailed usage statistics.  It allows data center managers to observe how much power their servers are using over time.