EDITOR ’ S QUESTION
HERMAN CHAN , PRESIDENT , SUNBIRD SOFTWARE
o see how automation will shape the data
T centre industry over the next 12 months , we only have to look at what the most sophisticated data centre managers are doing today . Modern data centre managers are already saving time , money and improving data accuracy with integration and automation . As their success stories continue to spread , their practices will increasingly be adopted by others .
Workday leverages its Data Center Infrastructure Management ( DCIM ) software ’ s bidirectional restful web service API to integrate systems and automate most of its data centre operations . Its automation use cases include provisioning and orchestration , VM data management , device state tracking and even parts management .
“ DCIM really is for us a source of truth for the tens of thousands of bare metal assets that we have in our global data centres ,” said Tim Putney , Workday .
MacStadium uses the same API to automate back-office processing and eliminate manual data entry and human error . It has integrated DCIM software with its billing platform , customer portal , administration system and accounting system to easily manage a high volume of customer orders .
“ Using the API , we ’ re able to poll our existing racks , see where we have space available and assign that space automatically to a customer order via our website ,” said Robert Perkins , MacStadium .
Leading data centre professionals at Comcast and eBay are leveraging their DCIM tool ’ s ability to automate rack power planning with highly accurate power budget profiles that are calculated for each device instance based on how they are used in their environment . With this automation , they have improved power capacity utilisation and eliminated stranded power while removing manual effort and risk .
MODERN DATA CENTRE MANAGERS ARE ALREADY SAVING TIME , MONEY AND IMPROVING DATA ACCURACY WITH INTEGRATION AND AUTOMATION .
“ From an RoI perspective , ( Auto Power Budget ) is massive for us ,” said Michael Piers , Comcast . “ We ’ re getting 40 % more usage out of our facilities and power sources .”
The same feature enables eBay to deploy projects with 33 % fewer cabinets , saving it around US $ 10,000 for each server-ready cabinet it can avoid deploying . In one example , it saved US $ 120,000 in a single project .
And that ’ s just the tip of the iceberg . The best data centre managers in the world are also automating management reports , rack PDU configuration backups , request and work order emails , thresholds and alerts on power loads , three-phase balance , circuit breaker state change , temperature and humidity , and more .
“ What we ’ re trying to do as an organisation is to get out of the data world and into the information world ,” said Raymond Parpart ,
The University of Chicago . To achieve this , the university is making DCIM software ‘ the centre of the universe for the data centre ’.
This is the story we are hearing more each day and this trend will only continue over the next 12 months .
All data centre managers need to increase operational efficiency and improve data accuracy . The best managers have already found the solution and it ’ s catching on quickly .
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