Although many organizations have adopted Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software, they have not made much progress in managing it. DCIM supports improved data center operational efficiency through service level agreements, transparency and reporting. But there are still areas where data centers can be strengthened to achieve wider adoption. Meanwhile, as DMAAS continues to grow in popularity, will there be friction between DMAAS and DCIM?
Comparison Of Advantages Between Dmaas And Dcim
The Core Benefits of DCIM
No one today doubts the many inherent benefits of DCIM. Enterprises that apply DCIM solutions correctly save time and money, reduce wasted manpower, and increase productivity.DCIM tools offer many benefits to data center managers by eliminating the need for staff to identify assets in the field, reducing space asset occupancy requirements, or eliminating the need for power and cooling resources to be consumed at a given time.
Data center staff can employ DCIM to access accurate, real-time data from their laptops or desktops.DCIM provides them with a window into the details of critical assets, including physical power supplies and network connections.DCIM tools help to identify critical path nodes, thereby reducing the risk of failure to acceptable levels, which is useful for accurate capacity planning. It can make reservations, moves, additions, and changes go smoothly. Even staff efficiency and morale improves as a result of the better workflow that can be gained by using DCIM.
Many data center managers rate DCIM as competent but not excellent. The reason is simple: deploying DCIM remains a challenge for many organizations. Some companies don't even use the commercially available standard version of the DCIM product, instead using customized versions to meet their specific needs.
In addition to being a software product, DCIM involves a process that involves multiple groups within an organization (usually facilities, data center, and IT), and implementing a DCIM solution means working with teams from different areas of the organization. When working together, managers must define the processes to be managed through the DCIM solution and ensure that the data currently available is accurate. This means doing the heavy lifting of setting up SNMP community strings and Modbus registers, as well as IPMI usernames and passwords to poll the data center for survey data. Equally important, the DCIM solution collects data from legacy hardware using existing, often undocumented protocols. Accelerating the implementation of a DCIM solution means completing all the steps to determine the unique needs of the data center, evaluating possible solutions, and scheduling a Proof of Concept to validate that the chosen solution meets the needs of the data center environment.
Value-added services for Data Center Management As A Service (DMaaS)
Data Center Management as a Service (DMaaS) emerged in the second half of 2016. What sets it apart from DCIM tools is the ability to collect and analyze data from a wide variety of clients in widely distributed data centers. The key idea is the ability to apply statistical analysis of big data. This is where machine learning and other forms of artificial intelligence extend the scope of value of DCIM, especially with predictive capabilities.The statistical analytics benefits of DMaaS are being embraced by data centers and IT managers because it is now possible to move investments in DCIM platforms deployed in data centers to cloud computing services.
DMaaS can ultimately accurately predict and prevent incidents and failures in data center infrastructure. With the help of DMaaS tools, data center inefficiencies and lack of capacity can be effectively mitigated. This cloud-based, vendor-agnostic Software-as-a-Service architecture will drive the future of data centers, edge computing and hybrid clouds. In contrast to local and SaaS-delivered DCIM, DMaaS aggregates and analyzes anonymized data that can be opted-in through machine learning. The value-add is that DMaaS combines cloud-based monitoring with maintenance and repair services, which is a boon for providers.
Not to be outdone, DMaaS is easy to adopt and can baseline and benchmark similar data centers. Its automation and monitoring benefits appeal to IT and DevOps technicians who like easy and instant access to large amounts of collected data. The analysis of this collected data from various cloud platforms forms the fulcrum for leveraging the key benefits of machine learning and increasing knowledge of cloud computing. With DMaaS, staff can access data from anywhere, meaning managers don't need to be on-site or rely on VPNs to assess risk or add the right people to solve problems
Trends For Future Development? The Involvement Of Artificial Intelligence
As DCIM adoption continues to grow, data center managers will look to improve operational efficiency. dMaaS extends the functionality and scope of DCIM with big data statistical analysis and machine learning. It will help organizations invest in local DCIM platforms and eventually move to cloud services.
Adopting cloud-based AI-driven management software allows for seamless monitoring and control of IT and facilities data center infrastructure, which includes applications across multiple sites. Artificial intelligence is a technology that effectively controls, monitors, and regulates power, cooling, compute, workloads, storage, and networks to optimize efficiency, productivity, and availability. Cloud-based analytics will use sensor data from multiple data centers to guide and implement preventive maintenance programs. Intelligent robots will order, test and install spare parts as needed to minimize failures and virtually eliminate unnecessary maintenance and testing.
Limitations Of DMaas
However, DMaaS has a long way to go before it reaches its potential. The long-term goal of DMaaS is to integrate physical data center infrastructure management with many other services, including IT workload management, energy management, connectivity and business costing, Achelto said. But it will take time to reach the other side of success.
DMaaS doesn't yet rival 'traditional' DCIM in terms of feature richness, but over time we expect it will be further enriched," she said. "DMaaS takes the data center space beyond DCIM and beyond single-site proprietary management. Over time, other data and services may be added, including integrated workload management, energy management, customer relations and business systems, weather, employee services, and security and network management."
Choosing between local DCIM and cloud-based DMaaS is not a clear-cut decision. Achelto says it makes sense to keep some DCIM monitoring functions local for security and latency reasons. For example, sending data to a centralized cloud facility and back is not practical for time-sensitive monitoring and alerting. On the other hand, forecasting is not essential for day-to-day operations, and it makes sense to keep it off-site.
Says Achelto, "I don't think DCIM and DMaaS are either/or; they can coexist."