FEATURE
you can raise your temperature set points to save energy and money .
Finally , automation can dramatically improve productivity by saving time and improving data accuracy . Integrating data centre management tools reduces manual data entry and breaks down information silos , giving data centre teams more time to work on strategic projects , get services online faster and collaborate around shared data to drive better decisions .
In what ways can data centre managers introduce automation to their management practice ?
Our customers are the most modern data centre managers in the world and we ’ ve been fortunate to witness first-hand how they are introducing automation into their management practice .
At a recent customer event , a customer presenter early on in their automation journey said , ‘ What we ’ re trying to do as an organisation is to get out of the data world and into the information world ’.
The way they were achieving that was to make DCIM software ‘ the centre of the universe for the data centre ’.
That is the story we hear from customers who are successfully implementing automation .
With a second-generation DCIM tool that has fully documented and open APIs , data centre managers can easily integrate with their CMDBs , ticketing systems , BMS and many other data centre management tools . Then , they can automate virtually anything they desire such as provisioning and orchestration , virtual machine management , parts management and decommissioning . They can also enjoy all the built-in automation capabilities within their DCIM tool such as thresholds and alerts and scheduled email of charts and reports .
How can automation assist with device power budgeting ?
First , consider the traditional approach to device power budgeting and rack power capacity planning . Data centre professionals often derate the server nameplate value to 60 % or 70 % to allow for a safety margin . This process is manual , estimated and largely inaccurate . The result is excessive stranded capacity .
This process can be entirely automated with our patented Auto Power Budget feature . Auto Power Budget automatically calculates an accurate power budget number for each make and model instance of a device based upon the actual measured load of that device in your environment running your applications . Power budget numbers are automatically updated every week to ensure a high degree of accuracy .
With this feature , Comcast was able to get 40 % more utilisation out of their rack power resources and eBay saved US $ 120,000 in a single project by reducing the number of cabinets needed to deploy new services .
What trends do you expect to see looking ahead when it comes to automation in data centres and how can organisations prepare in order to stay ahead ?
I expect to see more adoption of data centre management tools that are open and ready for integration with out-of-thebox connectors , along with improving process maturity to enable forwardthinking data centre managers to drive automation in their operations .
By integrating systems and leveraging automation capabilities in their tools , our customers are saving time and dramatically simplifying data centre management . The best practices they are pioneering are getting noticed by other data centre professionals .
To prepare , organisations should begin researching how these leaders are leveraging automation to enable a single source of truth , eliminate human error , improve collaboration , increase the utilisation of existing resources , maintain uptime , improve workflow and productivity , and more .
To stay ahead , organisations need to understand which of their unique pain points can be resolved by automation and deploy modern data centre management software that will help them get there . �
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