The role of a DCIM

With growth of more than 4% per year on a global scale between 2019 and 2020, the construction of Data Center has never been so important in France but also in Europe. While the data center operating tool needs are taken into account during the design, the tools for operating IT rooms and managing repositories (asset management, wiring management) are rarely taken into account because they often depend on another entity in the organization. In fact, these processes are often not very industrialized and poorly integrated into the ISD process.

Operate an evolving infrastructure

The Data center is a building that changes on a daily basis. Its role is in fact to host data materialized in the form of servers. Data centers are continuously cooled by several types of technology that may exist on the market, such as adiabatic or “water cooling”. Apart from the technological aspect, the design of a data center takes into account a large number of criteria where it is essential to have a real reflection. The construction and operation of a data center takes several decades, whether in terms of the equipment or the infrastructure itself. This infrastructure evolves over time, notably as a result of the development of data centers.
Operation plays a key role in this regard. It consists of making the business work while ensuring operation and maintenance. The first challenge is managing the electrical, cooling and network infrastructure as customer demands may vary during the lease. In addition to being modular with power increases that can be recurring, the layout of the rooms and the demands of end customers are constantly adjusted, often to the detriment of good operation with complicated monitoring for the teams on site. DCIM plays a real role that is essential for the proper operation of the Data Center.

 

The role of a DCIM

DCIM is a real day-to-day infrastructure management tool. It serves as the cornerstone of the Data Center. It allows you to have a real map of the building with details of the electrical and cooling infrastructure as well as the room plans. A precise vision going to the bay and allowing to have a clear view on the cabling and the operating parameters.

It therefore provides a clear view of the infrastructure installed on the basis of several criteria which can be:
– Energy monitoring most often allowing real-time monitoring of energy consumption with the theoretical calculation of the PUE. DCIM thus allows monitoring of all consumption by going from the HV loop to the servers,
– Environmental monitoring including real-time collection of temperatures and humidity levels. It can thus monitor a large number of parameters as required.
– Asset management which includes real-time inventory of DCIM resources. By resources we must understand material resources but also software in the most advanced cases. The various additions as well as the updates of the inventory bases can be done manually by means of certain elements such as RFID chips.
– Cabling management which often includes a Structured database and a map of the Data center with all the cabling of the servers.
– Scenario planning understand often allow to check the impact on the power supply as well as on the cooling.

A large number of features can be implemented within this tool such as for example event management, workflow optimizations, monitoring and setting up of automated and remote reporting.