IT and facilities are experiencing unprecedented pressure to improve uptime, reduce power and free up capacity. Over the next five years, new deployment models such as cloud, outsourcing, hosting and co-location will continue to challenge the data center’s typical mode of operation. 

Even as these demands escalate, data centers are often challenged by capacity limitations. Power and cooling constraints limit the ability to deliver on new business requirements. Uptime and availability are lowered when power is not dependable. Service quality and SLAs are put at risk, and the lack of detailed insight into consumption leads to unnecessary costs. A demanding operating environment requires leaders to overcome challenges such as:

• Meeting energy budgets and targets by managing cooling and power, complicated by the inability to identify the devices and systems generating the load. Identifying where capacity exists and opportunities for greater efficiency.
• Reducing or avoiding downtime (with visibility to device level for the power chain) from risks created when power is not dependable and systems failures due to power outages or other power-related faults.
• Capacity restraints demanding better management to avoid the expense of constructing new data centers, cost of downtime and limited ability to deliver on new business requirements.
• Visibility and transparency when managing IT, cooling and facilities and infrastructure devices. Limited ability to accurately identify available capacity, provision new assets or access accurate maintenance and service histories.

CA Data Center Infrastructure Management (CA DCIM) can help by bringing together facilities and IT in a software solution that stresses availability, efficiency and cost savings. CA DCIM helps decision-makers to more effectively understand energy consumption and use, visualize data center space, place and locate data center assets, manage asset lifecycle, perform root-cause analysis and plan capacity. 

Unified DCIM.
Reduces separately administered data, systems and tools. Provides automated access to live and historical reporting.

Automated data collection, calculations and monitoring.
Supports a variety of communication protocols and metrics calculations based on built-in and/or custom elements.

Automated intelligent alerting of conditions and reliability.
Automatic detection and intelligent alerts of undesirable energy or environmental conditions.

Capacity-and inventory-aware infrastructure management.
IT asset and rack capacity planning, access to information regarding current capacity, asset listing and device locations. Locate and track assets, and report device configuration and service history.

Visualization of energy, power and space within the data center.
Three-dimensional view of data center layout and asset inventory locations. Graphical navigation to simplify location of specific facility or devices and alarms. Plan rack placement based on available excess cooling and power. Real-time monitoring and resource management.