Data Center Handbook, 2nd Edition

33DATA CENTER INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT

Dongmei Huang

Beijing Rainspur Technologies, Beijing, China

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 with the purpose of cost reductions, increased capacity, compliance and control, and overall efficiency improvements. In a 2019 IT report published by Gartner “IT Key Metrics Data” majority IT budgets are spent on data center infrastructure and its operations, and surprisingly, not many companies have invested in the tools, technologies, and discipline needed to actively manage these huge capital investments.

Data center infrastructure management (DCIM) is a critical management solution for data centers that has been used in data center industry and proven successfully. 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 systems ...