The data centre is a critical part of any organization and how it is managed can have a great impact on profit and return on investment. Regardless of its size, the importance of ensuring that internal and customer data is safe and secure has to be of paramount importance to the company.
Having the right data centre management partner can ensure that the managers can sleep well at night knowing their information o their servers or stored on the cloud is being handled effectively and efficiently.
1. Choosing a professional specialist
To choose the right data centre management company you should consider a number of factors. They should include their capacity to manage the level and quantity of data and information that you currently produce, and be able to grow with you as that volume increases. Secondly, they should have a solid track record in management and operations of critical data centre electrical and mechanical systems and that they have the ability to provide round the clock and around the year security.
Other factors to consider should be expertise in both fire and leak detection and mitigation, documented maintenance policies that you can review and power usage efficiency measures.
2. Basics of data centre management
Data center management could involve a variety of tools, software programs and hardware devices in the form of computer parts, drives, and cables that help organize and manage the information stored in a data centre. It also represents a class of products and services that are designed to assist the growing global demand for the electronic storage of information. That might be coming up with the most energy efficient ways to cool a data centre or ways to ensure that the power supply is always backed up and no data is lost during a power failure.
Data centre management consultants will usually deploy specialized software, hardware and sensors and their work is guided and can be judged by a set of data centre performance management and measurement metrics. These include industry standards like power usage effectiveness, CUE, and data centre energy productivity benchmarks. These data management consultants have also become specialized in certain areas of expertise like asset lifecycle management and facilities monitoring and access, while others offer a full range of data management services to their clients.
3. Factors driving data centre management
There are several trends in data centre management that are driving the focus of data management experts. They include capacity planning, asset lifecycle management, uptime and availability enablers, the need for more efficient power and support for heat density cooling and data centre consolidation. There is also an increased reliance on some critical IT systems including virtualization and cloud computing capacity as well as green IT initiatives and a renewed focus on energy efficiency in all aspects of data centre management.
4. Reduce energy and increase efficiencies
This last area that has been mission centre for data centre managers as they seek ways to reduce energy and increase efficiencies. It’s much easier to measure energy use today so it is also easier to see where it being wasted. Some data centre management consultants are introducing processes that can lead to a 20 percent reduction in a data centre’s total operating expenses.
Other programs are finding ways to document network service, optimum routing, failure scenarios and interact with incident and problem management processes. They can also find ways to maximize the use of airflow and eliminate stranded resources such as space, which further drives down infrastructure costs. Even as data centres become more complex, data management software can provide ease of operation, and real-time notifications to ensure that important updates are not missed and that all programs are in full compliance.
