device42 managing data center assets

Critical Considerations for ManagingData Center AssetsHow DCIM Software Can Impact your Data Center Operations

Device42, Inc. | 760 Chapel Street, New Haven, Connecticut 06510 | (866) 343-7242 | www.device42.com

DEVICE42 WHITE PAPER | April 2015

Making IT Matter


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Device42, Inc. | Copyright 2015 2

INTRODUCTIONManaging physical, logical, and cloud infrastructures in a datacenter involves an expansive range of capabilities. While theremay be numerous ways to define these capabilities, here isone perspective that outlines the key areas for data centerinfrastructure management (DCIM) solutions:

▪ IP Address management

▪ Inventory/asset management

▪ Power and environmental monitoring and control

▪ Impact management

▪ Password management

▪ Cloud management

▪ Cable management

Regardless of how these areas are classified, effectively managing a data center comesdown to having a centralized data center infrastructure management (DCIM) tool thatmakes IT assets visible, understandable, and controllable.

This white paper will explore both the challenges and critical considerations of effectivelymanaging data center assets along with solution capabilities that make effectively man-aging IT assets possible.

IDENTIFYING THE COMMON CHALLENGESOne of the best ways to illustrate the many challenges and areas of expertise involved inmanaging en enterprise data center, is to address common scenarios experienced byCFO’s, CIO’s, CTO’s, and IT managers:

It’s budget time one again and you have numerous requests for new servers. The projects all sound worthwhile. But you barely received CAPEX approval for last year’sservers and face a similar task again. To prepare for budget discussions you need a host of questions answered:

▪ How are the servers purchased last year being used?

▪ What applications are running on which servers?

▪ Which business units, cost centers, projects, or departments are assets assigned to?

▪ How much is each business unit, cost center, project, and/or department costingin IT assets?

This white paperwill explore boththe challengesand critical considerationsof effectivelymanaging datacenter assets ...


▪ Your monitoring systems report that one or moreservers are either under stress or are down. While theteam begins addressing the problem, affected cus-tomers and internal users need to ne notified. But theteam doesn’t know the applications running on theaffected servers, much less who the users are.

▪ Your servers are in a colocation facility and you periodically exceed your planned energy expense.You’d like to consider solutions to remain within your power allotment withoutaffecting critical application services. The problem is you don’t have any way to look at historical energy usage and you don’t know which servers are running critical vs. low priority applications.

▪ It’s audit time again and the auditors want to know what users have write access toeach server, database, and application. They also want you to prove that pass-words have been changed every 3 months over the past year. How do you do that?

▪ You need to create disaster recovery and business continuity plans but no oneknows which applications and users will be affected by losing which servers,switches, and other devices.

Unfortunately, these situations, and numerous other ones like them, are common experi-ences for data center managers and engineers. Fortunately, they issues do not have to beproblematic or challenging.

Addressing these issues starts with understanding and managing the interdependenciesbetween IT assets.

THE INTERDEPENDENCIES OF IT ASSETSThe assets within your data center are numerous and diverse spanning multiple categories across physical, logical and cloud environments:

▪ Switches, routers▪ Buildings, rooms, racks▪ PDU’s▪ Spare parts (CPU’s, disk drives, RAM, etc.)▪ Software applications, operating systems, database platforms▪ Storage networks

▪ Physical, virtual, and cloud servers

▪ IP space, subnets, VLANs, VRF groups, MAC addresses

▪ DNS

... assets withinyour data centerare numerousand diversespanning multiplecategories ...


▪ Patch panels▪ Users and user groups▪ Accounts and passwords▪ Software services running on devices ▪ Applications running on devices

▪ Miscellaneous assets including: HVAC, breakerpanels, DMARC’s, fabric extenders, fax machines,filler panels, monitors, projectors, scanners,shredders, sensors, … and more

And all of these assets have many interdependencies with one another. For example,

▪ IP addresses are assigned to devices

▪ Applications can be on physical, virtual, or cloud devices

▪ Customers and internal users are dependent on applications

▪ Passwords are assigned to devices and applications

▪ Users and groups need varied access privileges

▪ Assets are interconnected by switches and patch panels

▪ Assets are connected to and powered by PDU’s

The point is, assets and their interdependencies are extremely complex and having an accurate visibility and an understanding of these assets and their independencies is critical to effectively managing the data center. Furthermore, the need to understand these interdependencies is no moreapparent than during scheduled and unscheduled data center outages. That’s where data center infrastructure management software (DCIM) serves as a power tool.

EXPLORING THE VIRTUES OF DATA CENTER SOFTWARERemembering the scenarios addressed earlier in this document, it is safe to say that asingle, comprehensive DCIM software solution can prevent the common frustrations experienced by data center managers and engineers.

More importantly, the right DCIM software can provide accurate, real-time information that enables proactive data center management, improved responses to unplannedservice outages, better user support, and increased responsiveness to organizationalneeds – to name a few.


DCIM SOLUTION COMPONENTSWhile the capabilities of DCIM software vary by solution provider, and some vendors mayprovide limited but “deep” solution capabilities in a limited few number of data center disciplines, the scope of DCIM solution can span multiple disciplines and operational areasas depicted the “DCIM Solution Components” diagram shown below.

Put simply, data center infrastructure management software enables companies to trackand manage IT assets, their interactions, and their dependencies. From a finance perspective,DCIM software also enables companies to track the costs of all these assets by department,cost center, project, customer, and user.

DCIM software is also a vital tool in effective capacity planning (e.g. adding locations,rooms, colocation cages and/or racks). For example, with accurate information about ITassets, including their capacities and their utilization, companies can avoid unnecessarycost by using existing racks or other hardware rather than buying new. This capacity per-spective is not only invaluable in the routine management of data center hardware costs,but also in the management of unplanned capacity changes where urgent time constraintsare components in a timely resolution.

Using DCIM software, companies can also construct realistic budgets based on actual expenditures by department or cost center. In addition, DCIM software canaccurately provide information that enables accurate IT cost allocations by business unit.With the shift toward virtualization and cloud services, DCIM software can also help organi-zations analyze virtualization usage and provide data that can be vital in architecting ordeconstructing data centers with physical, virtual and cloud components.

DCIM software can also be a vital tool to accurately understand the impact of both pannedand unplanned system outages and performance issues. With the right DCIM software, therelationships between devices, software, and users is clearly defined, visualized, andinstantly available.

... data center infrastructuremanagementsoftware enablescompanies totrack andmanage ITassets, theirinteractions, and theirdependencies.

SOLUTIONCOMPONENTS


From within a single DCIM console data center staff can monitor, report, analyze and even control power utilization at intelligent PDUs and outlets that service, racks, rooms,servers, and even buildings. DCIM software capabilities should also include the ability tomonitor environmental sensors such as temperature, humidity, presence of water, accessand egress sensors, and more.

While these capabilities represent only a portion of the capabilities of a comprehensiveDCIM solution, they provide insight into how DCIM software can address the commonissues involved in managing a data center.

DCIM SOFTWARE WRAP-UPBy now, it is clear that DCIM software has the potential to dramatically impact data centermanageability as well as service and support of your IT infrastructure. Be aware that theDCIM marketplace has been established for more than a decade and that there are arange of solutions that support specific aspects of managinga data center. The result is that managing a data center withcomprehensive functionality could result in using multiple relatively high-priced, narrowly focused solutions – each with a unique UI and management console.

In contrast to a specialized, multi-solution approach to DCIM, busi-nesses can acquire a single DCIM solution that provides a broadrange of functionality from within a single application that costs afraction of any one of the many solution-specific DCIM tools.

If your organization is considering the introduction of a DCIM tool into your data center, or considering deploying anadditional DCIM tool to address specific data center needs, be sure to define and prioritizeyour requirements before engaging with DCIM solution providers. This will enable yourenterprise to match the best solution to meet your needs, instead of aligning your businessto meet the capabilities of DCIM solutions available on the market today.

Lastly, ensure your evaluation of the solutions includes a complete understanding of theimplementation requirements, the challenges or ease of integrating the solution to yourdata center, the accuracy of the provider’s capability claims, the support requirements foroperating the solution within the enterprise, and, most important of all, the references andexperiences of clients that have deployed the solution in organizations and environmentssimilar to yours.

Data Center Infrastructure management solutions can have a profound and positiveimpact of your data center operations. The effectiveness of “homegrown” solutionsbased on desktop technologies such as Excel and Visio is usually a fraction of the effec-tiveness of purpose-built data center management solutions. As a result, exploring DCIMsolutions is an exercise that can yield significant benefits and advantages.

Data CenterInfrastructuremanagementsolutions canhave a profoundand positiveimpact of yourdata center operations.



Device42enables quick,easy, and effective IT infrastructuremanagement.

ABOUT DEVICE42Device 42 Inc., a leader in Data Center Infrastructure Manage-

ment (DCIM), delivers comprehensive, low cost solutions that

enable organizations around the globe to quickly, easily, and

effectively manage their complex IT infrastructures. Device42

software centralizes data center management making IT

assets visible, understandable, and controllable.

Using Device42, companies can identify, visualize, and manage devices (whether physical,

virtual, or cloud), networks components, software, and passwords using a browser

interface. Device42 helps companies visualize their infrastructure, understand network

interdependencies, improve network security, and mitigate the impacts of planned and

unplanned IT network changes. Device42 is delivered as a virtual appliance, is easily

installed, and provides comprehensive features including auto-discovery via RESTful APIs

for rapid data input and reliable results.

Download a free trial, or schedule a demo of Device42 and see why an ever-increasing

number of companies around the globe are using Device42 to manage their data centers.

Additional information about Device42 can be found at www.device42.com.


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device42 managing data center assets

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