Data Center Infrastructure Software: What’s Out There?

If ensuring near-perfect uptime is a goal for your data center, then monitoring and managing your infrastructure is an important capability. Even brief incidents of downtime can result in large business losses, especially because the damage is not limited to, say, the amount of time that power to the IT equipment is cut off: once power is restored, servers must be rebooted and other maintenance tasks may need to be performed, all of which takes time

To meet these needs, a number of companies offer software to enable DCIM deployments.

APC by Schneider Electric StruxureWare for Data Centers. Described as “a management software suite designed to collect and manage data about a data center’s assets, resource use and operation status,” (“StruxureWare for Data Centers”), this software offers a number of tools for collecting and processing data for energy efficiency, equipment usage and capacity, and operational expenses.

iTracs Converged Physical Infrastructure Management. This iTracs offering is a suite of DCIM software designed for managing enterprise-class data center infrastructure. The suite consists of two modules that can be deployed separately or as a unit: iTracs Converged Data Center for managing a facility’s internal physical infrastructure, and iTracs Converged Building Systems for managing infrastructure beyond the boundaries of the data center. The Converged Physical Infrastructure Management (CPIM) package that is designed around iTracs’ unique Interactive 3D Visualization, which enables pokies online virtual navigation of the data center environment in three dimensions, providing a powerful view of the facility from a computer terminal.

Emerson Network Power Trellis. The Trellis platform employs Emerson Network Power’s various software offerings, including management of assets, cooling design, power and embedded server firmware. The integrated platform provides several applications, including Inventory Manager, which delivers fast details on currently deployed inventory and capacity as well as the ability to speed deployment of new equipment.

Rackwise Data Center Manager. Rackwise’s flagship Data Center Manager software package integrates its Data Center Essentials, Data Center Intelligence and Real World Integration. Data Center Essentials includes a number of modules, such as Visualization, which uses Internet Explorer and Visio-based interfaces to provide visibility into data center infrastructure status and deployments, as well as design capabilities. Other aptly named modules include Asset Management, Power Management, Cable Management and Virtual Machine Management. Rackwise’s Real Time Monitoring manages data for temperature, humidity and power collected from a variety of device types.

Nlyte Suite. Another DCIM offering is Nlyte’s suite of software modules, which comes in editions starting at the entry-level Express Edition and including the Standard and Advanced editions, culminating with the full-feature Enterprise Edition. The flagship Enterprise Edition includes a number of modules, such as the Floor Planner Module, Control Module, Report Module, Open Web Services APIS, Dashboard Module, Predict Module and Bulk Data Manager

Data centers are complex facilities, integrating a variety of systems that must all function nearly flawlessly to enable delivery of IT services to customers whether in the company or outside it. This complexity makes management and monitoring of infrastructure an extremely difficult task, especially as companies pare down their staffs. Thus, the data center infrastructure management market is booming. Data center managers are looking for solutions that enable a consolidated view of the data center and that provide information on the various systems. The above DCIM packages are just a few of the available options, and they are discussed briefly in no particular order, be sure to also consider other vendors, who may have just what you’re looking for to manage and monitor your data center.

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