In my last blog on this site I had stated: “Mapping the entire chain from application and the application’s business owner to the VM on which it is residing and all the way up in the power and network chain to the source of power (in small data centers mostly up to the UPS) and network routers and switches would introduce far greater financial savings that could be a blog topic by itself”.
I view DCIM Asset Management delivering in three different ways:
– Data Center Asset Database
– Data Center Asset Relationship Mapping
– Data Center Asset Lifecycle Management
In this blog I will focus on Data Center Asset Relationship Mapping and its potential ROI.
Data Center Asset Relationship mapping draws out the entire chain, provides the linkages as well as the hierarchy of all the IT and physical infrastructure assets in a data center. This starts from source of power right up to the VM Server. This mapping, sometimes referred to as power or network chain, can be depicted in a visual diagram which provides easy understanding of the cascading impact should there be a failure of any device in the chain. It also helps to understand the precise redundancies required to run a 24×7 operation within defined uptime levels. Enterprise-level DCIM Asset Management Software provides this Asset Relationship Mapping.
Next, where’s the ROI from this?
- Uncovering under-utilized or over-provisioned assets
- Recovering stranded capacities in data center assets
- Deferring or avoiding new data center construction/retrofit investments
Any of above can mean significant savings in capital costs and in cost of capital. We are not even going into the areas of potential savings in energy costs and opportunity costs of outages that can be prevented due to better visibility of the cascading impacts.
DCIM Asset Management, specifically Asset Relationship Mapping will be an important deliverable in our new wins at a High Performance Computing Center in a leading higher educational institute and in the data centers of a leading mobile operator in South Asia.