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3. Analyze and Diagnose, which provides
data center personnel with the ability
to respond more quickly to changes in
the infrastructure and manage more
efciently. Operating data available
through monitoring and data capture
initiatives can be used to extend the life
of the data center, reduce mean-time-
to-repair, synchronize infrastructure with
virtualization automation and analyze
performance against SLAs.
4. Recommend and Automate. The nal
stage of progression enables data center
optimization by providing data center
personnel with the visibility and control to
optimize performance while maintaining
or improving availability. With this level
of progression, data center management
becomes truly proactive as personnel
can anticipate potential failures and
automatically shift compute and physical
resources to eliminate downtime while
increasing resource utilization to optimize
efciency across the data center.
Creating a comprehensive approach to
data center infrastructure monitoring not
only addresses the rst phase of DCIM
maturity but enables future phases.
The remainder of this paper outlines 10
steps data center managers can take to
create an infrastructure monitoring system
that will deliver value today and create
the foundation for holistic Data Center
Infrastructure Management.
Figure 1. DCIM improves the management of the facilities infrastructure and
the IT infrastructure layer it supports.
SPACE POWER COOLING
BUSINESS SERVICE LAYER
BUSINESS APPLICATIONS
DATA CENTER INFRASTRUCTURE LAYER
EQUIPMENT (PHYSICAL)
SPACE, POWER, COOLING
IT INFEASTRUCTURE LAYER
VIRTUALIZATION
COMPUTE, STORAGE, NETWORK
DCIM GAP