THE EDGE
• Available floor space remaining . In addition to tracking available cabinet space , track available floor space by the number of open cabinet positions to know how much white space is available to deploy new cabinets on the data centre floor .
• Data and power ports capacity and usage trends . How effective you are at planning and managing your data centre capacity is related to how detailed you are managing your port level capacity . Tracking capacity down to the data and power port level provides granular data that clues you in to how many available ports remain . Monitor your usage and capacity by connector type to ensure you never run out of free data or power ports in your data centre . By tracking physical port capacity at the cabinet level , you can intelligently provision new equipment , make more informed capacity planning decisions , use power and network resources more efficiently and reduce operating expenses .
• Requests by requester , stage , type and location . To maintain SLAs while improving efficiency and productivity of data centre staff , you must properly monitor and manage moves , adds and changes . Track the status and number of change requests , tickets and work orders – who is making them and where – what progress is being made and what types of changes are being requested . Track your requests from creation to approval to ensure work order quality and transparency while improving staff efficiency through improved collaboration .
• Completed requests over time . It ’ s important to know how much work is being done in the data centre . One
method of doing this is by monitoring the number of completed requests by type of request over time . Tracking data centre activity and productivity in this manner allows you to manage human resource capacity , utilisation and productivity more effectively and find opportunities for process enhancements .
• Asset audit trail . Having complete visibility and transparency into the information and history of any asset in your data centre helps drive efficiency and facilitate compliance . For the most effective remote data centre management , maintain a realtime audit log for all changes in your data centre that includes what action was taken , by who and when .
• Inlet temperature per cabinet . A common mistake in data centre monitoring is to monitor the temperature at the room level rather than at the rack inlet level , potentially leaving you blind to cabinets that are operating at unsafe temperatures . Instead , monitor each cabinet ’ s inlet temperatures in real time to ensure that your equipment is operating safely within ASHRAE standards , easily identify hot spots and save money by avoiding overcooling .
• Average max temperature trends . In addition to tracking the latest temperature per cabinet , you should add a level of sophistication to your monitoring by trending that data over time to identify spikes and irregularities . By monitoring the average max temperature per cabinet over time , you can ensure that your equipment is operating within safe guidelines not just now , but all the time . If you see temperature spikes , you ’ ll have data to identify what the issue was and prevent it from reoccurring .
• Energy consumption per location . Energy consumption per server is growing each year as increases in performance drive energy demand and the cost of energy consumed can account for up to 50 % of total data centre operating expenses . As such , energy consumption needs to be monitored and intelligently reduced . Track your energy consumption and set targets to reduce consumption , bill back users , meet corporate sustainability and green initiatives , and collect energy rebates and carbon credits .
It ’ s more critical than ever to integrate , analyse and act on the KPIs that have the most impact on your daily IT operations , but how do you begin to remotely monitor these metrics ? With a comprehensive remote Data Centre Infrastructure Management ( DCIM ) solution , it ’ s easy .
A modern DCIM tool provides all your most important KPIs right out of the box with zero-configuration dashboard widgets , reports and visual analytics . An enterprise-class data and health poller gathers data directly from facility equipment to ensure accurate , highquality information that leads to deeper , more reliable insights . Second-generation DCIM makes it simple for data centre professionals to make smarter , more informed remote data centre management decisions to improve data centre health and efficiency while dramatically simplifying capacity management . ◊
IT ’ S MORE CRITICAL
THAN EVER TO INTEGRATE ,
ANALYSE AND ACT ON THE KPIS
THAT HAVE THE
MOST IMPACT ON YOUR DAILY IT OPERATIONS .
70 Issue 20 www . intelligentdatacentres . com