Data Center Handbook

33Data Center Infrastructure Management

Mark Harris

Nlyte Software, San Mateo, CA, USA

33.1 What Is Data Center Infrastructure Management?

The Data Center industry is awash with change. Since the days of the Dot-Com era, the data center has been massaged, squeezed, stagnated, and reconstituted more than once for the purposes of cost reductions, increased capacity, compliance and control, and overall efficiency improvements. In a survey of IT professionals published by Gartner in their “IT Key Metric Report” (December 2012), almost a third of all global IT budgets are spent on data center infrastructure and its operations; and surprisingly, very few companies have invested in the tools, technologies, and discipline needed to actively manage these huge capital investments.

Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) is now a critical management solution for Data Centers. As a new category, the origin of the term “DCIM” is not clear, nor is the exact definition of DCIM universally agreed at the moment. That said, the initial spirit of DCIM can be summarized much in the way Gartner has expressed it: “The integration of information technology and facility management disciplines to centralize monitoring, management and intelligent capacity planning of a data center’s critical systems. Additionally, DCIM is achieved through the implementation of specialized software, hardware and sensors. DCIM will enable a common, real-time monitoring and management platform for all independent ...