DCIM

1. ^
Business-wise, Future-drivenTM
Cheat Sheets to Data Center
Infrastructure Management
The Brands You Trust.

2. Cheat Sheets for Data Center Infrastructure Management Business-wise, Future-drivenTM
Table of Contents Data Centers
Introduction..................................................................3
How DCIM helps operations.........................................4
How DCIM helps planning............................................5
How DCIM helps analytics............................................6
Examples of how DCIM tools can
improve traditional processes.......................................7
Schneider Electric Table of Contents

3. Cheat Sheets for Data Center Infrastructure Management Business-wise, Future-drivenTM
Introduction Data Centers
Once upon a time, a data center operator managed a 15 rack data center at a
small manufacturing firm. Because his facility was so small, he didn’t use any
physical infrastructure management tools. Instead, he felt confident in and relied
on the “tribal knowledge” he had acquired over the years. However, over time, his
15 racks became much denser. His energy bills went up and his cooling and power
systems drifted out of balance. At one point, when he added a new server, he
overloaded a branch circuit and took down an entire rack.
While this story begins with “once upon a time,” it is a true story, and illustrates just
one set of challenges in managing a data center without the right tools. Data center
infrastructure management (DCIM) tools enable organizations to plan, predict,
analyze, and ultimately drive down costs. Without DCIM tools, the business value
of the data center can improve only as far and as fast as the human brain will allow.
The following cheat sheets and illustrations provide a snapshot look at how DCIM
software can improve planning, operations and analytics.
Each cheat sheet addresses:
For an even
• Common questions answered by DCIM tools
• Functions that can be performed by DCIM software, and
deeper look into
• Examples of how DCIM can improve day-to-day operation as the benefits of DCIM,
well as long term planning and management read the complete
white paper, “How Data
The illustrations provide examples of common workflows (ex. Load shifting, Center Infrastructure
inlet temperature setting, CRAC fan loss) that can be dramatically improved Management Software
with modern data center infrastructure management. Improves Planning and
Cuts Operational Costs."
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4. Cheat Sheets for Data Center Infrastructure Management Business-wise, Future-drivenTM
How DCIM helps operations Data Centers
Common questions that DCIM Operational functions that DCIM What can happen WITHOUT DCIM
operational tools answer software performs software
• What is my current workflow? • Track single & three phase equipment power • In a large financial data center, the provisioning and
• How can I address hot spots? draw, ensuring all three phases are balanced installation of servers became so complex that only
• What is the overall health of my data center? • Illustrate power path down to rack, including highly paid engineers were able to do it.
• I lost a fan on my CRAC. What do I do now? measured load and rack capacity • A data center manager in NY was concerned about
• My power capacity is exceeded on a rack, what • Report average and peak power usage by rack provisioning a server in his London data center, and
can I do? which helps ensure optimal placement of a new flew to London in order to place a Post-It® note
• What is my PUE? server on the rack position he wanted reserved, just to
• Generate an audit trail for all changes to assets ensure the power and cooling could support the
and work orders for a specified range of time, additional server.
including a record of alarms raised and alarms • A mid-size data center was intentionally over-sizing
removed their cooling capacity to avoid running out of cool-
• Identify excess capacity and indicate which ing. They also had several servers underutilized.
devices can either be decommissioned or used • A data center operator installed 9 new servers
elsewhere in a nearly-empty rack. He checked that all the
• Generate a power usage effectiveness (PUE) servers turned on and considered the installation
value on a daily basis and track historical PUE a success. However, the next day the UPS had
• Communicate power, cooling, rack and other switched to bypass because the overnight load on
physical infrastructure information directly to the newly installed servers had peaked and over-
a VM manager to ensure physical hosts have loaded the UPS.
“healthy” power and cooling resources • A low criticality server was inadvertently installed in
a high criticality rack (2N) instead of a rack with no
redundancy. This error, discovered when decom-
missioning the server, cost them 20 times more in
electricity than necessary.
• A recently virtualized data center was allowing the
VM manager to automatically move VMs based on
compute requirements. They failed to consider the
possibility of overloading the PDU and ended up
crashing.
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5. Cheat Sheets for Data Center Infrastructure Management Business-wise, Future-drivenTM
How DCIM helps planning Data Centers
Common questions that DCIM Planning functions that DCIM software What can happen WITHOUT DCIM
planning tools answer performs software
• Where does the next physical or virtual server get • Provide graphical representations of IT equipment • A data center with no real process for deploying
placed? and its location in the rack equipment learned through an assessment that
• Will I still have power or cooling redundancy • Visually display the impact of pending moves and they had numerous hotspots. The air distribution
under fault or maintenance conditions? changes on power capacity and cooling distribu- was insufficient, even though the bulk capacity was
• Do I need to spread out my blade servers to get tion available.
reliable operations? • Simulate the consequences of power and cooling • A rack of servers was lost when an IT administrator
• How will a new server impact the existing branch device failure on IT equipment for identification of unintentionally overloaded an already maxed-out
circuit? critical business application impacts power strip.
• What will the impact of new equipment be on my • Proactively manage within rack and floor tile • A data center with no asset management tool had
redundancy and safety margins? weight limits IT equipment removed from a rack. Since no auto-
• Does the existing power and cooling equip- • Simulate cooling scenarios in the data center with mated tracking of rack assets occurred, significant
ment have the capacity to accommodate new computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approxima- time was wasted trying to locate the misappropri-
technologies? tion ated equipment.
• Generate recommended installation locations • A data center was using the failover mechanism of
for rack-mount IT equipment based on available their virtualization platform (ability to migrate their
power, cooling, space capacity, and network virtual machines), but in their planning, they didn’t
ports consider that the servers were all dependent on the
same UPS. When the UPS failed, no UPS protect-
ed servers were available to migrate the loads to.
• A data center operator performed manual checks
on racks looking for free space and a network port.
Their planning consisted of feeling behind the racks
to check if they were too hot, placing the new serv-
ers in racks, and hoping for the best.
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6. Cheat Sheets for Data Center Infrastructure Management Business-wise, Future-drivenTM
How DCIM helps analytics Data Centers
Common questions that DCIM Analytics functions that DCIM software What can happen WITHOUT DCIM
planning tools answer performs software
• What do I have in my data center? • Identify discrepancies between planned energy • An air conditioner has sufficient capacity, but inad-
• Who has touched which equipment and when? usage, based on nameplate information, and equate air distribution to the IT load
• Do I have stranded cooling and power capacity? actual usage, based on actual power data • A PDU has sufficient capacity but no available
• When will firmware have to be updated? • Generate inventory reports organized by device breaker positions
• By what date will the data center run out of type, age, manufacturer, and properties of the • Floor space is available, but there is no remaining
power and cooling capacity? What will run out device power
first? • Generate energy usage reports by subsystem • Air conditioners are in the wrong location
• When should batteries be charged on the UPS? • Provide energy use details that enable the linking • Some PDUs are overloaded while others are lightly
• When will the next large data center physical of operating costs to each business unit user loaded
infrastructure investment be necessary? group which then allows for “charge backs” • Some areas are overheated while others are cold
• How can I predict the need for future infrastruc-
ture, investments and rollouts?
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7. Cheat Sheets for Data Center Infrastructure Management Business-wise, Future-drivenTM
Examples of how DCIM tools can improve traditional processes Data Centers
Load Shifting Intelligent Temperature Setting
CRAC fan loss
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8. Cheat Sheets for Data Center Infrastructure Management Business-wise, Future-drivenTM
Data Centers
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