Modern infrastructure will help companies reduce the inefficiencies that plague traditional data centers.

FERMONT, CA: Data centers are constantly challenged to stay ahead of the ever-changing technological advances as well as the rising demands of the customers. Data center technicians and managers are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain higher uptime, control costs, and deploy efficiently at the same time. But it is certainly not impossible. The key challenges facing data center administrators during the deployment and management of data centers are listed below.   

Real-time Monitoring

A lot is going on inside the data centers, and unforeseen incidents are likely. Some devices operate all at once, linking wires, network connectivity, cooling systems, power distribution, storage units, and more. For data center operators and administrators, constant monitoring and recording of different metrics is a must. A DCIM system gives a more in-depth insight into the operations and performance metrics of the data center. It helps track, analyze, and generate real-time reports, enabling decisions, and immediate actions to be taken accordingly.

Improving Channel Capacity

Data center operators were traditionally needed to update their network architecture every few years. Most data centers are at maximum capacity at present, however, data center operators need to find a way to expand channel bandwidth to achieve 400GE speeds. It's equally important to reduce the power per bit. Data center operators turn to manufacturers of transceivers to move to the speed class of the next generation. Advanced techniques of modulation and coding help IT professionals overcome this challenge. Forward Error Correction (FEC) is an advanced coding technique that, together with the payload data, sends the information required to correct errors. FEC introduces new research issues that need to be discussed in the physical layer of signal analysis.

Capacity Planning and Management

Data center managers tend to over-provision more often than not to avoid downtime. This results in resource and space-wasting. It also causes a waste of power and energy. The capacity of a data center has always been an unresolved issue for data center managers with the rise in data. Data center managers can find out the empty physical space, room, with electricity, cooling, and other resources that are used in a data center by using a DCIM system. Therefore, optimizing capacity as well as reducing costs, saving energy, and at the same time, avoiding downtime becomes simple.

Performance Maintenance

The main concern for data center managers and operators is to measure the performance and ensure the uptime of data centers. This also includes maintaining the power and accuracy of cooling and ensuring the overall structure's energy efficiency. In most cases, measuring the metrics manually is of very little or no support. As a data center manager, a powerful tool like a DCIM system helps in tracking key metrics such as Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) in real-time, making it easy for you to maximize and control uptime and other performance.     

DCIM for Energy Efficiency and Cost Cutting

In particular, it is estimated that the data center sector accounts for 1.4 percent of global electricity consumption. Due to its massive amount of energy consumption and rising temperature problem, the data center industry is often caught in trouble. Several times it is noticed that more power is lost than it is used at a data center facility. It occurs when proper instruments for tracking energy and environmental sensors are missing. DCIM system helps to monitor energy consumption efficiently, optimize it, and also to reduce costs wherever possible. This will help to reduce the costs of the data center and be energy efficient and environmentally friendly at the same time.

Using DCIM tools will greatly assist all data center operations tasked parties and help ensure constant information flow.