What Is DCIM? Data Center Infrastructure Management

Data center infrastructure management (DCIM) is a set of best practices that provide centralized management of data centers. With the right tools, the data center operators can monitor their system operation status and manage equipment and wiring seamlessly. DCIM makes the operation management of data centers easier and more flexible.

In this article, we discuss DCIM, why it is necessary, and its benefits.

Read more: Best DCIM Software for Managing Your Data Center 2021

What Is Data Center Infrastructure Management?

Data center infrastructure management is a union of IT and operations to manage and optimize the performance of data center infrastructure within an organization. DCIM software tools help the data center operators to monitor, measure, and manage the utilization and energy consumption of data center-related equipment and facility infrastructure components.

DCIM helps improve the relationships between a data center building and its systems.

DCIM helps administrators recognize and improve the relationships between a data center building and its IT systems. DCIM tools began as a component of building information modeling (BIM) software, which is used by data center operators to create digital schematic diagrams of buildings. Most of the DCIM tools allow diagrams to be printed out, which is a helpful feature for maintenance or installing new equipment.

DCIM software gives data center operators the ability to run efficient operations and improve infrastructure planning and design. DCIM can bridge information across organizational domains such as Data Center Ops, Facilities, and IT to maximize the utilization of data centers.

Data center operators create flexible and efficient operations by visualizing the real-time status of temperature and humidity at the server room, equipment status, power usage, and the workload of air conditioning.

Why Is Data Center Infrastructure Management Necessary?

The tools and functionalities of DCIM are most effective in data center asset management. Monitoring, reporting, visualization, predictive analysis, asset management, and other functionalities make DCIM necessary for all data centers.

• Monitoring: It is essential to ensure that the temperature, power, or humidity is at an acceptable level in a data center. Real-time monitoring of DCIM helps the administrators by automatically monitoring and collecting this information.
• Reporting: DCIM solutions are associated with several sensors that provide real-time data on the data center. This can make a difference when it comes to preventing potential disasters. The reporting allows operators to conduct predictive analyses to ensure server room health.
• Visualization: Visualization is like the eye of the management system in the data center. It allows IT staff swift and accurate consumption of critical data, reducing incident response errors and helping staff execute the proper strategies.
• Predictive analysis: DCIM software provides a predictive analysis that can be used to map out potential scenarios. It helps administrators to create a contingency plan for when incidents occur in a data center, as well as identifying areas for improvement.
• Asset management: Asset management is the most important issue of any data center operation. DCIM tools help the operators ensure proper utilization of the assets and their functions within the facility through monitoring and reporting. This ensures the reliability of equipment in the data center.

Read more: Data Center Management Training & Certifications

What Are DCIM Benefits?

DCIM tools provide many benefits for a company in managing its data center. The benefits of DCIM include improved productivity, uptime, energy efficiency, and environmental impact, as well as cost reduction. 

• Improved productivity: DCIM features provide accurate, real-time information to indicate any issues before they lead to a system failure. Integrated and automated workflow management increases productivity.
• Improved uptime: DCIM software monitors critical facilities infrastructure continually, via tools that poll equipment, report on data, and monitor threshold violations. With built-in alerting, data center operators can react before failures impact users and services.
• Improved energy efficiency: DCIM allows the automatic collecting, trending, and reporting of data from the IT and non-IT loads of the data center. The information from all the energy-related equipment helps to ensure corporate energy efficiency initiatives.
• Improved environmental impact: By improving efficiency, DCIM also has a positive effect on environmental issues, such as cooling efforts, reducing wasted resources, and managing energy. The integrated sensors within DCIM software help to monitor airflow, temperature, and humidity to better allocate resources.
• Cost reduction: The constant flow of real-time information on every aspect of operations can pinpoint sections of the facility that are no longer required. By reducing operational costs, DCIM helps to reduce overall costs.

DCIM Tools Are Critical

Andy Lawrence, the author of Datacenter Infrastructure Management Software: Monitoring, Managing and Optimizing the Datacenter, said, “It is difficult to achieve the more advanced levels of data center maturity, or of data center effectiveness generally, without extensive use of DCIM software.”

Data center infrastructure management (DCIM) tools become a necessary part of the data center by ensuring higher asset reliability and capacity, better energy efficiency, lower environmental impact, improved security, and overall better connectivity.

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