A Manifesto for Efficient IT Infrastructure Management

Data center infrastructure management (DCIM) is about more than just managing environmental data of the assets inside the live data center space. DCIM needs to include all aspects of the equipment in the data center, extending to the entire lifecycle of the asset, from purchase to end of life.  In fact, I would suggest that DCIM is actually a pretty poor term for what should really be ITIM (Information Technology Infrastructure Management), as it’s really about managing in terms of the IT, not the data center. Data center managers face more challenges today than ever before, from increasing demand for IT applications and equipment, pressure to avoid downtime and demand from upper management for better operational efficiency. With the majority of companies still using spreadsheets to manage their data centers, it’s no surprise that IT leaders grossly underestimate the impact a poorly managed data center has on the bottom line. 

Imagine your staff is ordering equipment for your data center and it’s going right to the store room, not just without being deployed, but also without being inventoried. Then it sits there, depreciating in value and collecting dust. This is just one of the horror stories I’ve heard in the field. One company that had this problem ultimately discovered that, in just a six week period, it had accumulated more than $700,000 in depreciation costs for assets that were not being used.

This is where managing the complete lifecycle of assets comes into play. IT managers need to be thinking about planning where each new asset will be used from the moment it is ordered and well before it has arrived. They need to be able to look at the data center and see real-time, historical and future data related to all aspects of management including: power, space, environmental factors, location, connectivity and ownership. Then they can plan and allocate space for the new asset and ensure it is deployed and correctly verified as ready to enter an operational state as soon as possible. The data center manager needs to document this process so that when a problem occurs, they can use the same information to troubleshoot the issue and resolve it as quickly as possible. Even virtualization is involved here. As severs are virtualized, the same information is needed to decommission the right servers at the right time.

One of the most common -- and costly -- issues facing IT managers is data center downtime. Studies show that it costs companies more than $5,000 per minute, with the average incident lasts 90 minutes, resulting in an average cost per incident of approximately $505,000^1. But all of this can be minimized if the IT infrastructure is properly managed.

The key thing to remember is that managing is different than documenting. Documenting is gathering the data, and if the vehicle for this documentation is spreadsheets that is often where the process stops (if it happened at all). In my experience, even with great spreadsheet records, each time there is a change planned for the data center, a comparison of the real infrastructure and the infrastructure records is made, just to be “sure;” that is hardly management! Management is when you can look at the data center from a holistic point of view and say things like, “Let’s look at what has been deployed recently, what capacity is available, what planned deployments are coming up and what the capacity constraint are.”

Case in point: one company I spoke with had a smaller data center of about 80 racks. They were keeping records in an MS Access database and were convinced the records were accurate. They were more diligent than most, running monthly checks to ensure the data were correct. However, the checks were being done based on paper printouts of the data, which in theory was updated into the Access database from hand written updates made to the records. When a proper full audit was performed, the team found 63 servers and switches that were not recorded anywhere, further illustrating that home-grown or spreadsheet management is not suitable for enterprise level infrastructure management, nor can a business achieve maximum efficiency in this way.

From the C-level executive down to the IT manager, data center efficiency is top-of-mind for everyone these days, as energy, people and space efficiency are business imperatives. It’s no secret that data centers consume a lot of power, with estimates putting consumption at about two percent of global energy consumption.² There are several things that IT managers can do to improve energy efficiency, starting with an assessment of the current data center conditions. Are there unused servers that could/should be shut down? What are the best candidates for virtualization? What really are the least efficient pieces of equipment in the data center? Without truly managing the infrastructure, determining problem areas can be next to impossible.

I was recently talking with an IT manager who was having issues with power overloads to the point where electrical breakers were tripping due to current overload issues. The data center was an older design and did not have end-of-row power panels, rather power fed from distribution boards. His first step to fix the issue was to commission an auditing and tracking exercise of each power circuit, using spreadsheets to document the information. After approximately $20,000 had been spent with external electricians, and equipment had been moved (at additional internal staff time and some service downtime), the problem was resolved. However, within three months the problem started again, as new equipment had been deployed and the spreadsheets, which were not well maintained, did not reflect the current deployed equipment status, leading to another costly audit.

The Manifesto

Companies need to take steps to manage IT infrastructure (whether you call that DCIM, ITIM, or something else) more efficiently. Start by deciding what data are important in order to manage the data center efficiently. There is no single list and no one-size fits all answer. It all depends on the age, size, scale and equipment in each unique environment. Then, pick a management system that will truly consolidate all the data currently managed in spreadsheets, as well as the data that should be managed, but isn’t because it’s too hard. Strongly consider whether or not the solution requires new hardware and whether this will add to your problems or lock you into one system. Next, ensure there are real, positive processes in place to keep the data up-to-date; no tool is of any use if it’s too much trouble to keep it accurate. Some systems make this easier than others. This is critical, as no tool by itself, no matter how fancy, or whatever the vendor says, is going to solve problems by itself. The next step, using the data for planning and further change, requires trust in the data. Do not fall into the trap of using the tool and still doing a physical audit each time change is required. You can achieve all of this, but it’s not easy and there are no magic bullets. Do not believe a vendor that says its system will solve all your problems without process changes; it won’t!

Properly managing your infrastructure is critical to being able to avoid downtime as well as meet operational efficiency demands. If you are cutting your data center short on proper management to conserve money today, it is almost certainly costing you more in the long run, both in resources and downtime. Whatever the future plans for your data center include, whether it is a move to virtualization, trying to become more green or moving to a cloud model , having up-to-date, centralized records of all aspects of your assets, the facility, the connectivity and historical data (not in spreadsheets!) will help to make those transitions run more smoothly. While no two enterprises are ever the same in what they want to manage, the principle that change cannot be managed effectively without accurate consolidated data and a truly effective infrastructure management system applies to everyone.

References

^{1, 2} Ponemon Institute (News - Alert). Calculating the Cost of Data Center Outages. 2011

About Paul Goodison

Paul Goodison has more than two decades of experience managing major IT projects across the globe and has first-hand experience with the consequences of poorly managed infrastructure in large IT environments. Paul managed IT infrastructure across Asia, including Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and the Philippines. Realizing that portability is the critical key to solving the challenge of IT infrastructure management, namely  ensuring records are updated and trusted, Paul and two of his colleagues were inspired to found Cormant, which subsequently developed CableSolve.  Cormant is focused on working with customers to improve their management, control and reporting processes by delivering a solution that provides a single-pane-of-glass view to where the physical and logical layers of IT infrastructure meet. He believes that every data center requires an IT physical layer infrastructure management solution. Paul travels the globe extensively and is based in the U.S., having previously lived in the Philippines, Europe, Singapore, and the UK.