Data center infrastructure management (DCIM) software was all the rage a few years ago. Data centers need a means to accurately measure power, cooling, and critical infrastructure assets to be able to better manage consumption. They also need a means to tie in the demand of the compute hardware to manage the overall data center ecosystem. That’s a rather tall order in some environments, and, while it sounds great, some DCIM solutions are sitting on a shelf, wasting space. Purchased and implemented are not the same. So why are these expensive software programs collecting dust?
The first thing to understand about DCIM is that there is time involved in setting up the software and hardware. Some solutions are software only, while some have interfaces to intelligent hardware. In-rack power distribution units (PDUs) — or intelligent power strips — were some of the first facilities equipment to gain intelligence. At the start, the intelligence not only understood equipment power consumption but also ensured that human error didn’t plug both primary and secondary power into the primary leg or, on a grander scale, phase imbalance for three phase systems, for instance.