At many enterprises the data center has long been the organization's most valuable asset. Demand for computing and storage resources is increasing, and so are electricity rates, which is why the benefit of optimizing data center infrastructure operations is obvious — it's a way to reduce costs. Beyond minimizing data center operating expenses, the transformative impact of DCIM lies within its ability help a business achieve its operating objectives and strategic plans for the future.
What does DCIM start with?
Generally speaking, there are many reasons to implement DCIM at a data center — better capacity management, detecting problems that can limit availability, reducing energy consumption, increasing asset utilization, and reducing staffing needs are all advantages that can be gained from a successful DCIM implementation.
However, faced with different types of hurdles, it often makes sense to start with the highest priority first and then go from there. This can be the most critical pain point or the highest value opportunity that a DCIM solution can address. Modular DCIM solutions make this type of phased implementation possible. After the first module has been rolled out, subsequent modules can be taken on step-by-step.
▲ PUE Energy Monitoring
▲ Real-Time Power Consumption
Partner with an experienced DCIM vendor that fulfils your prioritized needs
It can be a challenge to assess the veracity of a software vendor's claims. With such a critical element determining a business's success, the choice of vendor must be carefully considered. It's best to trust a vendor that is on solid financial footing and has a long track record of supporting its products.
Delta InfraSuite Manager belongs among the ranks of the truly comprehensive DCIM solutions that are designed to cover all of the enterprise's infrastructure management needs. InfraSuite Manager was designed with a modular structure, including seven modules, to ease implementation and simplify later upgrades. Below you'll find three companies from different verticals that have placed their trust in Delta.
Customer Case Study
Fabless Semiconductor Company - Optimizing Data Center Operation
A typical use case for a fully-fledged DCIM solution: One of the leading fabless semiconductor companies in Taiwan that manufactures system-on-chip products for wireless communications, HDTV, DVD devices, and Blu-ray required a solution that would allow it to monitor all assets in its new mid-sized enterprise datacenter. That included power, cooling, door access, environmental measurements, logic controllers, and IT equipment. The data center's PUE was also identified as a critical metric the company needed to monitor. In addition to these power and environmental aspects, asset information was also required within the same platform.
With its needs, the Operation Platform, PUE Energy, and Asset modules of Delta's InfraSuite Manager were installed, uniting the traditionally separate domains of Facilities and IT to create a central repository of information for a holistic view of the entire data center. A virtual power meter was created to calculate chiller water energy in kWh. Mean time to repair (MTTR) was shortened considerably as a result of the new DCIM implementation, while the availability and sustainability of the datacenter were increased.
Tata Communications - Monitoring Energy Consumption
Tata is a global colocation center operator with eight sites, each consisting of four floors with two rooms each and 200 racks per room. Consequently, having a central repository for asset data and comprehensive real-time dashboards to monitor power facility devices in the data center is mission critical. Tata also needed to calculate energy consumption (kWh) and real-time power (kW) for each rack.
The global telecommunications provider chose to install the Operation Platform, PUE Energy, and Asset modules of the InfraSuite Manager at its datacenters. With this comprehensive DCIM solution from Delta installed, Tata was able to calculate energy consumption based on which racks its customers are renting. The system is now capable of generating individual power usage reports for each customer by rack, power source, and in aggregate. Tata now possesses the granular reporting and monitoring capabilities it was looking for.
Bytesnet Data Center - Acting with PUE Calculation
Bytesnet is a regional provider based in Holland Rotterdam that provides state-of-the-art data center solutions including network services, housing and colocation, and cloud services based in Groningen and Rotterdam. Bytesnet started on its path to data center infrastructure management by first focusing on its power infrastructure. The provider sought to gain the ability to calculate PUE for its entire data center and use that data to improve energy efficiency and reduce costs.
With the InfraSuite Manager and its Operation Platform and PUE Energy modules installed, Bytesnet was able to successfully integrate a number of different devices (vendor-agnostic) into its real-time data center management. With the system's flexible and ergonomic interface, staff now enjoy outstanding usability when monitoring the data center's day-to-day operations. PUE data provides actionable information that Bytesnet uses to optimize efficiency and lower operating costs. With real-time information on critical loads for the cooling system and data from UPS systems, power meters, and more, the provider is now able to safeguard availability as well.
Summary of DCIM benefits
Data centers that use DCIM to gain visibility and understand their actual capacity needs will be able to significantly limit this costly downtime. DCIM can also help a company that is approaching the limits of its datacenter's capacity to get the most from the power available and potentially defer large capital expenditures on new facilities.
From the examples above, they show that InfraSuite Manager can handle the infrastructure management requirements of any organization — from small hosting providers to global collocation and telecommunications market leaders. Moreover, Delta's DCIM solution is capable of solving data center problems and delivering ROI quickly in a multitude of other scenarios and industries.
Outlook
The synergy of a DCIM implementation can only be achieved once a holistic view of the entire data center, including environmental, power, and capacity information, is available. At that point, companies gain the ability to plan their capacity. That's crucial to the success of any business. At the same time, unnecessary capital investments in new datacenters represent a financial risk. As the majority of datacenter operators have discovered, the reasons to deploy a DCIM solution have already become too numerous to ignore.
If you haven't already, it's time to start identifying your organization's quick wins and then fast track to ROI with a modular yet comprehensive DCIM suite. Contact Delta today for a free consultation to get started on your path to strategic data center management, step by modular step.