How Remote Monitoring and Management Benefits Data CentersApril 05, 2017

Data centers are very big business. With the data protection landscape changing rapidly, data center business will continue to grow further. The challenges involved are immense and are destined to become even more so in the future.

Monitoring is very critical in data centers and reputed data centers monitor every detail diligently. There are many data center infrastructure management (DCIM) software packages available in the market. However, many have not been successful as they have not been able to meet the meticulous monitoring demands spelled out by data centers.

A data center is made up of a number of servers, network equipment, and data storage facilities. Data centers endeavor to minimize the human involvement, with lesser staff to take care of increasing workloads and more equipment. Data center administrators or managers face a tough task in monitoring the massive center, as it involves right from installation and implementation of the management system. Increase in business also means a revisit of capacity planning — it may require upgrade and expansion of infrastructure and equipment. More equipment and infrastructure means more management responsibilities.

How effectively the data center is managed is directly dependent upon the effectiveness of the management software application. A secure, robust and scalable application is what is needed. The power consumed by the data center and the environmental data are critical elements that can help judge the status of the data center. Power consumption would be directly proportional to the number of transactions taking place.

There is also another important reason for having lesser staff in data centers. Human involvement leads to human errors and this actually causes more risk to the equipment and data — hence, lesser human intervention is desired. Any effect to the data and equipment will lead to system downtime which is not preferred in the IT industry. This leads to loss of service and availability and based on the terms of the service level agreement the data center may be legally sued.

Effective remote management of data centers serves the purpose of critical monitoring. There are Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) tools from numerous vendors, however choosing a comprehensive RMM from a reputed and supportive provider is what matters. RMM is also offered by Managed Service Providers (MSPs) as a service. It is preferable for huge data centers to maintain an RMM tool for themselves. RMM offers comprehensive remote management and monitoring of all endpoints, devices and IT equipment from a single dashboard.

Any new data center venture must strongly consider, or consider it mandatory to control the data center management through RMM. Based on increasing business needs, data center managers will periodically revisit their capacity planning. And whatever the size of the data center, remote monitoring and management would be the best bet.