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DATA CENTRES
is removed and replaced by a complete suite of new
management tools, but in practice, some integration
with an installed base is inevitable.
In this regard, many of the DCIM vendors
themselves are working to simplify their tools, from
specification, installation, configuration and rolling out
the system, to patching, maintenance and continuous
improvement of the applications and the actionable
information provided. As ever, they are tailoring their
tools towards a service-delivery approach, cloudenabling the tools and taking this burden away from
the data centre operations team so they can focus on
their real objectives.
DCIM is becoming an established part of data centre management.
Greater computing and storage densities boost
the requirement for cooling and backup power; yet
the costs incurred by these are becoming more and
more visible with metrics such as PUE (Power Usage
Effectiveness) allowing comparisons between efficient
and wasteful operations.
Measurement and Management
Once, the energy required to cool data centres was a
multiple of that needed for the IT equipment. Now,
data centre management strive to bring PUE ratings
as close as possible to the ideal, but impractical figure
of 1.0. With data centres increasingly keen to use
their improving PUE ratings as a marketing weapon
against their competitors, accurate measurement and
management of the energy spent by their supporting
infrastructure increases in importance. Marketing
aside, energy costs, dependent on the price of oil, are
among the most unpredictable and capricious over
the medi V