Every year, IT has to do more — manage more servers, smart devices, apps, and services. Endusers continually raise the bar, demanding more performance and better response times. And while everything about the modern data center is growing, IT headcounts and operating expense budgets remain the same or shrink. Data center managers and their teams must continually find ways to work smarter and reduce the biggest expense items. Since energy costs have risen to the top of the list, looking for ways to consolidate and reduce power consumption is a good place to start.
Virtualization and cloud technologies have helped, making it possible for IT to more cost-effectively build and manage more energy-efficient data centers. However, with all of the attention focused on the high-level data center models, it can be easy to overlook some of the significant advancements at the hardware level. The latest servers, storage devices, switches, racks, power distribution units, cooling equipment, air handlers, and the myriad of other components are all feeding status information onto the network. Servers, in particular, have also evolved to give remote IT teams many new, fine-grained monitoring and control options.