There is an increasing global trend of utilizing data center infrastructure management (DCIM) software to enhance operational efficiencies within data centers. This trend is not limited to large enterprises, as smaller organizations are also adopting DCIM to alleviate the daily challenges faced by their data center operators.
This section will go through various top brands and their features providing DCIM tools.
What Is Data Center Infrastructure Management Software (DCIM)?
DCIM software is a specialized tool designed to provide comprehensive management and complete insight into the operations of a data center.
Its purpose is to monitor, manage and control all aspects of a data center infrastructure, such as power and cooling, IT assets, space utilization, network connectivity, etc.
IT equipment such as servers, storage, and other network devices, as facility infrastructure mechanisms such as power distribution units and air conditioners, all are managed in real-time using DCIM software.
The software provides a complete view of the data center’s physical infrastructure, including power and cooling systems, racks, servers, networking devices, connectivity, and storage devices.
The implementation of DCIM helps organizations keep a close watch on every device and component that is part of the data center to optimize the available resources, reduce downtime, and improve overall operational efficiency.
DCIM is a powerful solution for automating data center operations and increasing ROI for all types and sizes of organizations.
According to a Mckinsey report, the number of US data centers is anticipated to increase by 10% annually through 2030. DCIM solutions are essential in this industry focused on growth since they lower costs, boost productivity, maximize space, improve integration, and help deliver cost-effective solutions.
Who Uses DCIM Software?
IT administrators utilize DCIM software to track and manage IT assets and other devices, monitor power usage, and plan for capacity and resource allocation. IT managers may assign programs to the best hardware and maximize resource use by quickly accessing relevant data. Even keeping up with rising workloads and consumer demands is made easier for them through DCIM.
Data center managers can also make smarter decisions and manage their facilities more effectively by DCIM to better understand how their data center functions in real time and resolve possible issues before they become critical.
To put it simply, IT managers and staff use DCIM to make the most of their data center resources and guarantee the best possible performance and dependability for their essential applications and systems.
Benefits of DCIM
In order to streamline data center operations and lighten the strain for operators in businesses of all kinds, DCIM software is being utilized more and more frequently worldwide. Here are some of the key benefits of implementing DCIM:
✅ Greater visibility: With DCIM software, administrators can monitor and control their entire IT infrastructure from a centralized location with more insight into the physical infrastructure.
✅ Better management of resources: DCIM gathers data metrics from various data center components and devices that ensure that the right apps are operating on the proper hardware and that each application effectively uses the resources it has been allocated. It aids managers in making better decisions and managing resources.
✅ Improved uptime: Due to continuous monitoring of various equipment and facilities of infrastructure, it helps easier detection of system weaknesses that helps to troubleshoot and address potential environmental, network, and power-related system malfunctions before they escalate into critical issues.
✅ Energy efficiency: It collects data from various energy-related equipment such as temperature, humidity, airflow, and power consumption metrics from network devices, racks, etc. This data provides valuable insights into ways to decrease energy consumption and reduce costs.
✅ Reduced risk: DCIM software monitors critical facilities infrastructure, collects and reports data, and alerts users of threshold violations to prevent failures.
What Features to Know Before Selecting DCIM Software?
Before selecting a Data Centre Infrastructure Management (DCIM) solution, it is essential to have a complete understanding of the requirements of your organization. Given that this industry has so many subcategories, this is very crucial.
Finding the perfect DCIM solution that meets your specific demands and features may be challenging without a thorough understanding, putting your operations’ efficiency and success at risk.
In this section, let’s see some features one should look for before buying or deploying DCIM software in their data centers.
➡️ Energy monitoring: Tracking power usage efficiency is one of the crucial factors in efficient data center functioning. DCIM should have a user-friendly interface to transform data from the data center, racks, cabinets, and IT hardware into usable information and provide multilevel alerts to monitor various equipment and data points.
➡️ Assets management: One of the most important factors one should look for in DCIM software. It helps to manage entire IT hardware assets, power devices, cooling devices, etc. In short, it operates and tracks end-to-end data center components and devices.
➡️ Floor & Rack Management: Effective space and rack management can significantly aid data centers in optimizing physical space, rack unit utilization, and geographic arrangement of assets.
➡️ Cable and structured network management: A DCIM system with adequate cable management capabilities expands beyond merely tracing connections from point A to point B. It must be able to identify discoverable links and visually represent and follow them, establish connectivity hierarchies, and, most notably, execute these tasks with ease.”
➡️ Capacity planning: Scalability is one of the other factors that DCIM software should possess. Accurately planning data center capacity is crucial for IT success. Over-provisioning wastes resources; over-provisioning leads to downtime and unhappy customers. Capacity planning is complex due to fluctuations in utilization and requires advanced planning and calculations.
To conclude, the DCIM software should be able to monitor and manage end-to-end data center operations, including IT assets, data storage, backup management, able to upgrade hardware and software, emergency planning, disaster recovery, reporting and optimization, Network performance monitoring, etc.
The section below will look at the top world leaders in DCIM tools.
Device42
Almost all operations related to data center management are taken care of by Device42 solutions, such as IT operations, compliance, and audit, migration and modernization, IT asset management, CMDB, etc.
As per the site, by implementing Device42 solutions, organizations can resolve outages ten times more quickly and achieve an average of 4.8 times return on investment.
It is trusted by the world’s leading organizations, such as Harvard, Verizon, Walmart, Allstate, etc. Info-Tech Research Group, a well-known technology research and advisory firm, has named Device42 as a 2022 Leader in IT Asset Management.
Device42’s DCIM capabilities have transformed how IT departments handle data centers. IT teams can visualize data centers accurately using powerful tools such as Data Center Room Layouts, IT Patch Panel Management, Detailed Device Information, Managing Spare Parts, Power and Thermal Management, etc.
IT admins can improve data center management by utilizing a range of auto-discovery tools for network, physical, or virtual infrastructures. Employ robust REST APIs to seamlessly incorporate other tools and maintain precise documentation of the data center.
By utilizing Device42 DCIM, you can mitigate operational risk associated with data centers and optimize your capacity planning. This is achieved through complete transparency of your power chain by real-time power monitoring of all power units in the data center.
Features
- Auto generates rack diagrams
- Easy to manage structured cabling with data entry via UI or APIs
- Full configurable power management alerts to warn you about anomalous conditions
- Collects real-time temperature and humidity readings from sensors within a data center
Device42 is a second-generation DCIM having a complete suite of features for Fast Deployments, Zero-Configuration Analytics, Data-driven Collaboration, and AI and MI capabilities. Device42 offers a flexible pricing structure for its software, which is available through an annual subscription model.
Atlassian
Atlassian is one of the most widely popular and proven and has been adopted by over 250,000 companies. Its data center enterprise solution meets the varying needs of organizations of all sizes.
Its software is used by some of the world’s top organizations, such as Nasdaq, ANZ, Cisco, Marriott, NASA, Nielsen, etc.
The company offers the full suite of software needed to successfully run a data center, including Agile & DevOps for better collaboration, automation, and intelligent workflows, IT service management for faster transformation, and work management for teamwork and to organizations of all your tasks from a centralized location.
Jira Software, Jira service management, Confluence for document collaboration, Bitbucket for code management, Bambo for testing and deployment, and Crowd software for centralized user administration are the software stacks used to support these tasks.
Teams may work more productively, save time, and collaborate easily with the aid of the solutions. Teams can concentrate on providing high-quality goods and services with Atlassian’s entire corporate solution while the platform manages the challenging tasks of version control and data management.
Its key features are increased identity controls, apps and extensibility, compliance and security, scaling and performance, infrastructure and operations, advanced user management, data, insights, etc.
Atlassian’s Data Center is a reliable solution for enterprises that require a scalable and high-performing platform. The solution is particularly suitable for companies that require high availability and fast response times.
Enterprises looking for a scalable and high-performance platform have a dependable choice in Atlassian’s data center. The solution is especially well suited for businesses with strict needs for prompt responses and continuous accessibility.
Sunbird
Sunbird is an award-winning leader in second-generation DCIM for remote data center Management. The Sunbirds products are used by thousands of customers globally, overseeing millions of assets in hundreds of thousands of racks and monitoring billions of data points daily.
It provides a comprehensive 3D view of your data center. It has over 100 pre-built dashboard widgets to accurately assess the capacity of your assets and elevate your asset management with advanced features that cover everything from servers to blades, power supplies, and hard drives.
Easily track your data center assets such as servers, networking, storage, etc.; you can even add custom fields to get detailed information instantly. Reports can also be generated quickly to ensure asset compliance.
Sunbird’s data framework is designed to facilitate the seamless extraction and linking of data for integration with third-party tools such as Tableau, BMCRemedy, PowerBI, ServiceNow, etc., via ODBC and APIs without the need for any further configuration.
Sunbird’s Power IQ Energy Management Solution tracks and measures energy usage through ASHRAE cooling charts and Smart Rack views. It provides real-time dashboards and reports to help identify savings in data centers. Information is consolidated into actionable reports for Green Grid’s PUE-level calculations.
Features
- Intelligent Capacity Search to find Capacity for new equipment easily
- Automatic and instantaneous power capacity calculation
- Automatically collects data from building, IT, & non-IT feeds
- Forecast Capacity with Real-Time Resource Management
- Out-of-the-box and custom reports for every data center scenario
If you are looking for end to end data center management solution to manage various aspects such as assets, capacity, energy, environment, power, security, connectivity, etc., then Sunbird can suffice your requirements. They have both subscription and Perpetual based licenses.
Cormant
Cormant is a unique system for Data centers and IT Infrastructure Management, acknowledged by major analyst firms such as Gartner, 451, IDC, Forrester, and OVUM.
It has delivered DCIM solutions for more than 17 years with a base of 300 plus customers managing more than 1.3 M assets.
Cormant DCIM boosts data visibility and accuracy for better change management and optimized IT infrastructure, leading to cost savings and better uptime reliability. One of its uniqueness is it offers a full refund after using it for 30 days if it doesn’t meet your expectations.
Cormant is trusted by global companies, including top banks and telcos. Since 2003, they have had a high customer retention rate of over 94%.
Cormant DCIM gathers information about enterprise IT assets, power and data connectivity, location, and status. Users can monitor this information via real-time visualizations such as dynamic rack views, floor diagrams, and historical dashboards. It delivers unmatched ROI and quick deployment, serving diverse businesses from small data centers to global finance.
Features
- Full equipment life cycle management from dock to decommission
- Full long-term historical trending data for power and environmental data
- Connectivity management for all power, data, and MPO
- 2D and 3D rack and data center plans are automatically updated based on data in the system
Cormant is a complete data center suit that delivers unmatched functionality and takes care of Consultation, Implementation, Integration, Site audits, Training, and Proof of concept. Its pricing for perpetual or subscription licenses depends on how many assets are managed to meet your business needs.
Manageengine OpManager Plus
OpManager Plus is a solution that assists data center managers worldwide in managing assets, improving design, planning new equipment, increasing efficiency, and planning for future expansion.
It also increases productivity and efficiency, making it an efficient network and infrastructure management solution.
OpManager Plus is a powerful DCIM software with rule-based firewall analysis offering security compliance, user-based access control, log management, real-time VPN data scrutiny, and bandwidth monitoring to detect and restrict rogue IP addresses accessing your network.
It provides real-time monitoring and management for network devices. It measures availability with ICMP ping or telnet, supports 8k+ devices with 200+ performance metrics, and offers service, process, bandwidth, configuration, and storage device monitoring to identify issues quickly on a visual platform.
OpManager Plus displays data center elements visually and provides real-time device status using color codes. OpManager Plus monitors real-time device temperature, energy usage, CPU health, temperature, and hardware attributes (voltage, power, fan speed).
Features
- Monitors storage on RAIDs, SAS Tape Libraries, NAS, FC, and SAN for quick identification of issues
- Monitors up to 230 metrics for anomaly detection and traffic shaping
- Prevents configuration issues by setting rule-based access, backups, and activity tracking
- Monitors device bandwidth, detects suspicious usage and blocks rogue IPs to secure your network.
ManageEngine OpManager Plus is a Scalable and centralized DCIM software that simplifies data center management, monitors endpoint usage, provides critical metrics, ensures uptime, reduces costs and enhances performance.
Datadog
Datadog is a full-stack monitoring platform that provides complete visibility into applications, servers, metrics, and clouds. It enables users to monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize application performance, trace requests, and track app performance.
The platform also allows users to build real-time interactive dashboards, analyze log data, and visualize traffic flow.
Datadog notifies users of performance issues and allows them to receive alerts on any metric. Furthermore, it provides full API access to bring observability to all applications and infrastructure.
The platform combines data and metrics from servers, containers, databases, and external services to provide comprehensive observability of your stack. These competencies aid DevOps teams in avoiding downtime, addressing anomalies in performance, and assuring optimal user experience.
Features
- Complete infrastructure performance visibility with easy setup, low upkeep, and broad coverage
- Network insights: On-prem & cloud, inclusive app performance & bare-metal appliance status
- Multidimensional visibility into containerized environments
- Tracks and analyzes query metrics and your entire database fleet with visualization
Though Datadog is a comprehensive platform that covers most sections of the data center, it lags in managing racks, environment, power, temperature, etc. Its pricing is based on different modules.
netTerrain DCIM
netTerrain DCIM offers a centralized, browser-based platform for multiple users to visualize all aspects of your Data Center, from Physical Space and Power Consumption to Cooling, Networks, Racks, Physical & Virtual Devices, Cards and Ports, Applications, Circuits, and Cables.
The platform includes easy-to-use navigation and powerful hierarchical diagrams to showcase data centers, IT inventory, and networks. By utilizing this software, you can increase visibility, control, and governance, aiding in capacity planning, energy consumption, troubleshooting, and reducing downtime for improved service levels.
It is an efficient DCIM tool with hierarchical diagrams at its core. Emphasizes simplicity with easy modeling and customizability, enabling quick addition or removal of field attributes and application of business rules. Allows creation of customized reports.
Its notable features include centralized IT inventory and network visualization to streamline capacity planning and ensure compliance. Reduces security risks and eliminates guesswork with real-time monitoring analytics.
Features
- Management of Space and Racks
- Monitoring of the environment (electricity and temperature)
- Asset administration
- Management of cables and circuits
- Forecasting and capacity planning
- Logical, virtual, and application views
netTerrain DCIM offers advanced visualization features for Data Center insights to improve decision-making and increase business value. Flexible and scalable pricing options are available for both on-premise and cloud, with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
VFPS DCIM
VFPS (Valley Forge Power Systems) provides powerful DCIM software that is affordable and easy to use. The software helps to monitor all aspects of your data center, including power, cooling, servers, storage, network devices, and VMs.
Features
- Asset Management
- Change Management
- Power & Cooling Management
- Software & OS Management
- Task & Workflow Management
- Auto-Discovery
- Auto-Change Management
- Capacity Planning
Valley Forge Power Systems has facilitated power backup for various customers for over 30 years, including generation facilities, data centers, and process control. The pricing details are unavailable on the website; you need to contact the company for more information.
Ni2 DCIM
Ni2 DCIM provides solutions to data center operators to streamline and automate data center processes, reducing errors and delivering value to customers.
It maximizes capacity and cuts costs by offering a consolidated view of the center’s different silos, including space, power, cooling, and connectivity.
Ni2 DCIM Solution offers tools to optimize data center capacity, provide the sales team with a clear capacity view, productized offerings for customers, and integration with CRM for additional value.
Ni2 DCIM automates the delivery process & reduces errors with workflows that schedule tasks, stakeholders & resources to ensure timely delivery. It also allows stakeholders to track delivery progress across different silos.
Ni2 DCIM Solution provides a comprehensive overview of data center systems’ health and features a unique smart analysis to view incidents, resource impacts, and customers.
It helps support organizations in reducing incidents and resolution time, integrates with incident management systems, and monitors SLAs to prevent breaches.
Final Words
Data centers are required by businesses and government agencies to store and process information. They have the option of building and managing their own, leasing one, or using public cloud-based services.
Data centers are required for the operation of education, finance, telecommunications, retailing, and social networking companies.
Data centers are critical for organizations that wish to run smoothly. DCIM tools that support end-to-end data center operations are gaining popularity. The DCIM tools outlined above can help you narrow down your options.
Next, check out Data Center Types.