Data Center Infrastructure Management

Overview

Worldwide demand for new and more powerful IT-based applications, combined with the economic benefits of consolidation of physical assets, has led to an unprecedented expansion of data centers in both size and density. Limitations of space and power, along with the enormous complexity of managing a large data center, have given rise to a new category of tools with integrated processes – Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM).

Once properly deployed, a comprehensive DCIM solution provides data center operations managers with clear visibility of all data center assets along with their connectivity and relationships to support infrastructure – networks, copper and fiber cable plants, power chains and cooling systems. DCIM tools provide data center operations managers with the ability to identify, locate, visualize and manage all physical data center assets, simply provision new equipment and confidently plan capacity for future growth and/or consolidation.

These tools can also help control energy costs and increase operational efficiency. Gartner predicts that DCIM tools will soon become the mainstream in data centers, growing from 1% penetration in 2010 to 60% in 2014. This document will discuss some important data center infrastructure management issues.

We’ll also take a look at how a DCIM product can provide data center managers with the insight, information and tools they need to simplify and streamline operations, automate data center asset management, optimize the use of all resources – system, space, power, cooling and staff – reduce costs, project data center capacities to support future requirements and even extend data center life.

Why Data Center Infrastructure Management?

The trend for consolidation and construction of ever-larger data centers has been basically driven by economy-of-scale benefits. This trend has been accelerated and facilitated by technological advances such as Web-based applications, system virtualization, more powerful servers delivered in a smaller footprint and an overabundance of low-cost bandwidth. Not many years ago, most computer sites were sufficiently small so that the local, dedicated IT and facilities staff could reasonably manage most everything with manual processes and tools such as spreadsheets and Visio diagrams. It has now become painfully clear that IT and facilities professionals need better tools and processes to effectively manage the enormous inventory of physical assets and the complexity of the modern data center infrastructure. Experience shows that once a data center approaches 50-75 racks, management via spreadsheets and Visio becomes unwieldy and ineffective. The outward expansion and increasing rack density of modern data centers have created serious space and energy consumption concerns, prompting both corporate and government regulatory attention and action. DC has forecasted that data center power and cooling costs will rise from $25 billion in 2015 to almost $45 billion in 2025. Moreover, in a recent Data Center Dynamics research study, U.S. and European data center managers stated that their three largest concerns were increasing rack densities, proper cooling and power consumption. Seemingly overnight, the need for data center infrastructure and asset management tools has now become an overwhelming, high-priority challenge for IT and facilities management. At the highest level, the enterprise data center should be organized and operated to deliver quality service reliably, securely and economically to support the corporate mission. However, the natural evolution of roles and responsibilities among three principal groups within the data center – facilities, networking and systems – has in itself made this objective less achievable. Responsibilities have historically been distributed based on specific expertise relating to the physical layers of the infrastructure:

1. Facilities: Physical space, power and cooling
2. Networking: Fiber optic and copper cable plants, LANs, SANs and WANs
3. Systems: Mainframes, servers, virtual servers and storage

Clearly, one major challenge is bridging the responsibilities and activities among various data center functions to minimize the delays, waste and potential operational confusion that can easily arise due to each group’s well-defined, specific roles.

What Is Data Center Infrastructure Management?

Basic Data Center Infrastructure Management components and functions include:

• A Single Repository: One accurate, authoritative database to house all data from across all data centers and sites of all physical assets, including data center layout, with detailed data for IT, power and HVAC equipment and end-to-end network and power cable connections.
• Asset Discovery and Asset Tracking: Tools to capture assets, their details, relationships and interdependencies.
• Visualization: Graphical visualization, tracking and management of all data center assets and their related physical and logical attributes – servers, structured cable plants, networks, power infrastructure and cooling equipment.
• Provisioning New Equipment: Automated tools to support the prompt and reliable deployment of new systems and all their related physical and logical resources.
• Real-Time Data Collection: Integration with real-time monitoring systems to collect actual power usage/environmental data to optimize capacity management, allowing review of real-time data vs. assumptions around nameplate data.
• Process-Driven Structure: Change management workflow procedures to ensure complete and accurate adds, changes and moves
• Capacity Planning: Capacity planning tools to determine requirements for the future floor and rack space, power, cooling expansion, what-if analysis and modeling.
• Reporting: Simplified reporting to set operational goals, measure performance and drive improvement.
• A Holistic Approach: Bridge across organizational domains – facilities, networking and systems, filling all functional gaps; used by all data center domains and groups regardless of hierarchy, including managers, system administrators and technicians.

A comprehensive Data Center Infrastructure Management solution will directly address the major issues of asset management, system provisioning, space and resource utilization and future capacity planning. Most importantly, it will provide an effective bridge to support the operational responsibilities and dependencies between facilities and IT personnel to eliminate the potential silos.

Once again your Data Center Infrastructure Management will prove invaluable by collecting, mining and analyzing actual historic operational data. Data Center Infrastructure Management reports, what-if analysis and modeling will help identify opportunities for operational improvement and cost reduction so you can confidently plan and execute data center changes.

VDI vs DaaS, What is the Difference and which is best for your business virtualization needs?

Virtual desktops give users secure remote access to applications and internal files. Virtualization technologies often used in these remote access environments include virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and desktop as a service (DaaS).

Both remote access technologies remove many of the constraints of office-based computing. This is an especially high priority for many businesses right now, as a large portion of the global workforce is still working remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and many organizations are considering implementing permanent remote work on some level.

With VDI and DaaS, users can access their virtual desktops from anywhere, on any device, making remote work much easier to implement and support, both short and long-term. Understanding your organization’s needs and demands can help you decide which solution is right for you

What Is VDI?

VDI creates a remote desktop environment on a dedicated server. The server is hosted by an on-premises or cloud resource. VDI solutions are operated and maintained by a company’s in-house IT staff, giving you on-site control of the hardware.

VDI leverages virtual machines (VMs) to set up and manage virtual desktops and applications. A VM is a virtualized computing environment that functions as though it is a physical computer. VMs have their own CPUs, memory, storage, and network interfaces. They are the technology that powers VDI.

A VDI environment depends on a hypervisor to distribute computing resources to each of the VMs. It also allows multiple VMs, each on a different OS, to run simultaneously on the same physical hardware. VDI technology also uses a connection broker that allows users to connect with their virtual desktops.

Remote users connect to the server’s VMs from their endpoint device to work on their virtual desktops. An endpoint device could be a home desktop, laptop, tablet, thin client or mobile device. VDI allows users to work in a familiar OS as if they are running it locally.

What Is Daas?

DaaS is a cloud-based desktop visualization technology hosted and managed by a third-party service provider. The DaaS provider hosts the back-end virtual desktop infrastructure and network resources.

Desktop as a Service systems are subscription-based, and the service provider is responsible for managing the technology stack. This includes managing the deployment, maintenance, security, upgrades, and data backup and storage of the back-end VDI. DaaS eliminates the need to purchase the physical infrastructure associated with desktop visualization.

DaaS solutions and technology stream the virtual desktops to the clients’ end-user devices. It allows the end-user to interact with the OS and use hosted applications as if they are running them locally. It also provides a cloud administrator console to manage the virtual desktops, as well as their access and security settings.

How Are VDI and DaaS Similar, and How Do They Differ?

VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) and DaaS (Desktop as a Service) share the common goal of providing centralized solutions for delivering desktop environments. Both leverage centralized servers to host desktop operating systems and applications, making managing and securing data easier. However, there are key distinctions. VDI typically requires on-premises infrastructure and demands significant IT management, making it suitable for organizations with specific customization needs or those handling sensitive data. DaaS solutions, on the other hand, are cloud-based, offering scalability and flexibility, making them ideal for task workers and organizations seeking a simplified, cost-effective approach to desktop provisioning and management.

Desktop as a service is a cloud-hosted form of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). The key differences between DaaS and VDI lie in who owns the infrastructure and how cost and security work. Let’s take a closer look at these three areas.

Infrastructure

With VDI, the hardware is sourced in-house and is managed by IT staff. This means that the IT team has complete control over the VDI systems. Some VDI deployments are hosted in an off-site private cloud that is maintained by your host provider. That host may or may not manage the infrastructure for you.

The infrastructure for DaaS is outsourced and deployed by a third party. The cloud service provider handles back-end management. Your IT team is still responsible for configuring, maintaining and supporting the virtual workspace, including desktop configuration, data management, and end-user access management. Some DaaS deployments also include technical support from the service provider.

Cost

The cost for DaaS and VDI depends on how you deploy and use each solution.

VDI deployments require upfront expenses, such as purchasing or upgrading servers and data centers. You’ll also need to consider the combined cost of physical servers, hypervisors, networking, and virtual desktop publishing solutions. However, VDI allows organizations to purchase simpler, less expensive end-point devices for users or to shift to a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) strategy. Instead of buying multiple copies of the same application, you need only one copy of each application installed on the server.

DaaS provider requires almost no immediate capital expenses because the cost model operates on ongoing subscription fees. You pay for what you use, typically on a per-desktop billing system. The more users you have, the higher the subscription fee you’ll have to pay. Every DaaS provider has different licensing models and pricing tiers, and the tiers may determine which features are available to the end-user.

Security

Both solutions move data away from a local machine and into a controlled and managed data center or centralized servers.

Some organizations prefer VDI because they can handle every aspect of their critical and confidential data. VDI deployments are single-tenant, giving complete control to the organization. You can specify who is authorized to access data, which applications are used, where data is stored and how systems are monitored.

DaaS is multi-tenant, which means your organization’s service is hosted on platforms shared with other organizations. DaaS service providers use multiple measures to secure your data. This commonly includes data encryption, intrusion detection and multi-factor authentication. However, depending on the service provider, you may have limited visibility into aspects such as data storage, configuration and monitoring.

How Do You Choose What’s Right for You?

Both VDI and DaaS are scalable solutions that create virtual desktop experiences for users working on a variety of devices. Choosing between the two depends on analyzing your business requirements to determine which solution best fits your needs.

DaaS is a good solution for organizations that want to scale their operations quickly and efficiently. The infrastructure and platform are already in place, which means you just need to define desktop settings and identify end-users. If you want to add additional users (such as contractors or temporary workers), you can add more seats to your subscription service and pay only when you are using them.

An in-house VDI solution is a good fit for organizations that value customization and control. Administrators have full control of infrastructure, updates, patches, supported applications and security of desktops and data. Rather than using vendor-bundled software, VDI gives the in-house IT staff control over the software and applications to be run on the virtual machine.

DaaS operates under a pay-as-you-go model, which is appealing for companies that require IT services but lack the funds for a full-time systems administrator or the resources to implement a VDI project.

DaaS is suitable for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMEs), as well as companies with many remote workers or seasonal employees. However, Desktop as a Service subscription rates, especially for premium services, may diminish its cost-saving appeal. With VDI, you must pay a high upfront cost, but the organization will own the infrastructure. Careful forecasting can help fix long-term costs for virtual desktops and applications.

Data Center Cable Management

Datacenter cable management is a complex task, Poor cable management will cause unexpected downtime and an unsafe environment.  Datacenter Cable management include Designing the network or structured cabling, Document all new patch cables, Determine the length of the cable, and plan for future expansion

Designing the network or structured cabling

When we design a new network, we need to identify where we need to keep the switch and patch panel also which colored cable we need to use to connect each server and type of cables like Ethernet or fiber cable. Also during the design, we need to design our network for future growth. When we run cables use the side of the racks  and also use cable ties to hold groups

Document all new patch cables

Documenting all patch cables is very important in a large Datacenter because it will be very helpful for troubleshooting any issues in the future and if we did not document patch cable that will cause unexpected downtime for our servers

Determine the length of the cable

Measuring cable length will help us to reduce costs and also will help us to make our data center clean

Plan for future expansion

This is one of the important when we design a new network because whenever we need to add more servers in the data center we do not want to redesign the entire network to add more servers.

5 Ways to Increase your Data Center Uptime

A data center will not survive unless it can deliver an uptime of 99.9999%. Most of the customers are choosing the data center option to avoid any unexpected outage for them. Even a few seconds of downtime can have a huge impact on some customers. To avoid such types of issues there are several effective ways to increase data center uptime.

• Eliminate single points of failure

Always use HA for Hardware (Routers, Switches, Servers, power, DNS, and ISP) and also setup HA for applications. If any one of the hardware devices or application fails, we can easily move to a second server or hardware so we can avoid any unexpected downtime.

• Monitoring

The effective monitoring system will provide the status of each system and if anything goes wrong, we can easily failover to the second pair and then we can investigate faulty devices. This way datacenter Admin will be able to find any issues before the end-user report.

• Updating and maintenance

Keep all systems up to date and keep maintenance for all your device to avoid any security breach in the operating system. Also, keep your applications up to date. Planned maintenance is better than any unexpected downtime. Also, test all applications in a test lab to avoid any application-related issues before implementing them in the production environment.

• Ensure Automatic Failover

Automatic failover will always help any human errors like if we miss any notification in the monitoring system and that caused one of our application crash. Then if we have automatic failover, it will automatically move to available servers. Therefore, end-user will not notice any downtime for their end.

• Provide Excellent Support

Always we need to take care of our customers well. We need to be available 24/7 to help customers. We need to provide solutions faster and quick way so customers will not lose their valuable time spending with IT-related stuff.

How the Shift to Virtualization will impact Data Center Infrastructure?

Virtualization is the process of creating software-based (virtual) versions of computers, Storage, Networking, Servers, or Applications. It is super important when it comes to building a cloud computing strategy. This can be achieved using HYPERVISOR which is software that runs above the physical server or host. What HYPERVISIOR does is pool the resources from the physical servers and allocates them to the virtual environment which can be accessed by anyone who has access to it located anywhere in the world with an active internet connection.

Virtualization can be categorized into two different types:

1. Type 1: These are most frequently used which are directly installed on the top of the physical server. They are more secure, and latency is low which is highly required for best performance. Some commonly used examples are VMware ESXi, MS HYPER-V, KVM.
2. Type 2: In this type, a layer of host OS exists between Physical Server and Hypervisor. Commonly they are referred to as Hosted Hypervisor.

Since clients nowadays do not want to host big equipment in their own office, they are likely to move towards the Virtualization in which a Managed IT Company like Protected Harbor will help them to prepare the virtual environment based on their needs and that too without any hassle. Data Center Infrastructure is expanding because of this and to keep the Data Center Scalable the best practices of the DCIM need to be performed.

Virtualization not only affects the size of the Data Centers, but it also involves everything that is located inside a Data Centers. Big Data Centers means it will need additional power units with redundancy, AC, etc. This also leads to the concept of interconnected Data Centers where one of them could be hosting certain parts of an application layer and another one hosting remaining. Virtualization gives the concept of cloud since Physical Servers and not visible to clients and they are still using their resources without being involved in the management of that equipment. One of the most important benefits of Virtualization is it gives the possibility to achieve the best Data Center Infrastructure Management Practice.

Data Center Infrastructure Management

In today’s world, Data Centers are the backbone of all the technologies we use in our daily life starting from our Electronic Devices like Phones, PCs going through all the way to Software that makes our life easier. And to run everything without any glitches Data Center Infrastructure Management plays an important role.

DCIM includes all the basic steps of managing anything which consists of Deployment, Monitoring and Maintenance. For a company that wants their services with no downtime (99.99%), they always look for recent development in the technologies that will make their Data Centers Rock Solid. This is where Protected Harbor excels. We follow every single step in order to make our Data Centers equipped and updated with the latest development in the tech world.

Managing a Data Centers involves several people who are experts in their own department and they work as a team to reach the end goal. For example, A Network engineer will always make sure the networking equipment is functional and there are no anomalies. The Data Center Technician will be responsible for all other hardware that is deployed inside the Data Centers. In sort here are few things which should always be considered while Managing a Data Center:

1. Who is responsible for the Equipment?
2. Current Status of Equipment.
3. Equipment physical location.
4. When potential issues might occur.
5. How the Equipment is interconnected?

Monitoring of a Data Center is as important as any other factor involves because it gives every perspective of the hardware and software and will send an alert in case of any event.

Power Backup and Air Conditioning are two vital resources to run a Data Center. Most people do not think of these two when they hear about Data Center. A power failure will bring it down and without a Power Backup, this is highly possible. Data Centers consist of expensive Power Backups which also have redundancy which plays an important role in case of a power failure. Data Center equipment generates massive heat and that’s when Air Conditioning comes into play. The temperature inside a Data Center should always remain within its limit. Few degrees (1-2) increase in temperature will put the hardware in jeopardy. In order to make sure all of these are functional the monitoring gives accurate data and actions are taken as per those events.

While deploying a Data Center, Scalability is always kept into account. A Scalable and Secure Data Center is always needed.

Crashes, Failures, and Outages are the biggest problem of bad management, and eliminating them effectively is the primary job of Data Center Infrastructure management. The end goal of DCIM is always to provide high availability and durability. An unexpected event can occur at any time and how effectively it’s recognized and resolved will change the availability percentage. Application Interface is one of the top priority which should always remain online and in order to keep it that way the best practices are followed. In order to deploy a Data Center, the first step that is carried out is planning. The plan gets an overview of the Assets that will be required to deploy and Manage. Planning also involves the people assigned to each task that will be carried out in the successful deployment of the Data Center.

Scalability of DATA CENTERS and Why it’s important?

Technology is being more advanced every single day and to keep up with its development the Data Centers should also be capable of all the changes that happen in Technologies. Scalability provides the concept of Data Centers which can be expanded based on the needs and its expansion will not affect any previously deployed equipment. Scalability is important because how fast a Data Center can grow depends on it and increasing demand does indicate the same.

DCIM involves Asset Management which is basically keeping checks on all the equipment deployed inside the Data Center when they will need replacement or maintenance. This also generates a report on the expenses involved. Since it’s been established that Data Centers has lots of equipment which mean in case of maintenance there may be times when the Hardware Company will also have to be involved to fix broken equipment.

In the end, DCIM can be categorized as the backbone of Data Centers which plays an important role in every aspect of a Tech Company, and using DCIM tools high availability can be achieved.