Why is Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) suchan interesting concept? It is because there are so many approaches to it.

Schneider Electric decided to approach DCIM as a software development problem. And it decided to do it from the software lab it operates in Kolding, Denmark. 

The starting point is a number of existing software products which manage separate functions within the data center. These have been placed under an umbrella brand, consisting of two suites, a framework and numerous modules. 

A brief outline of Schneider Electric’s management offerings is useful at this point. Ecostruxure is the company’s ‘power plant to plug’ energy management offering. Within Ecostruxure there exists the StruxureWare management software layer. This is split into three parts, StruxureWare for green buildings, for industry and for data centers.

The software layer for data centers consists of StruxureWare Central and StruxureWare Operations. These are split into the modules covering power, cooling, operations, central and a dashboard. 

The Kolding facility is home to the main development team and is supported by counterparts in India. To address the complexities of data center management it has taken the modular approach or as the company says: It is establishing a framework, and then rationalizing it down to offerings. 

Given its background, you would expect Schneider Electric to be able to deliver comprehensive power, cooling and facilities management. But how it pushes through the glass ceiling into the management of the IT hardware layer and beyond is new. This is the StruxureWare Central suite domain. 

BIG ON VIRTUALIZATION
The company is making a significant noise about the management of virtualized environments believing, as many do, that virtualization is a major DCIM adoption catalyst. 

In virtualized environments the suite monitors both for resource issues and for load. So for example, in the event that a rack is overheating, the physical management offered through StruxureWare will talk directly with the compute management such as VMware Vsphere and System Center from Microsoft. In the event ofa power issue within a rack being identified, an alert is send to the virtualization manager which moves the VMs to a location named by the suite as being available and capable of handling them.
           

POWER MANAGEMENT
Soeren Brogaard Jensen, VP at Schneider Electric’s Software arm, says the firm’s background has put it in an good position for DCIM. He also says that often the facilities management side is missed by analysts. 

"DCFM is being missed by most analysts: the cooling systems, the mechanical systems, power quality, the opening and closing of power valves, are being managed today. But if you are not collecting that data and you have never designed 2N power systems from when the power entered the building down to the rack, you don’t understand the complexity of what is required," Jensen says. 

What Jensen is getting at is that DCIM is not simply about optimizing IT performance or utilization but that electrical subsystem design is such an established and specialist area that understanding power is fundamental to any DCIM development. 

He is not dismissing the attempts of IT suppliers to push systems management suites as DCIM solutions but highlights the issue they must address because, he says, they simply don’t understand power and its management. 

UNLOCKING CAPACITY
Henrik Leerberg, product line director, Enterprise Software, at the company, says many many data center managers today exist in data silos. He says people are still using Microsoft Excel to manage their data centers. "This can’t continue in an environment where they are under constant pressure to do more with less, drive efficiency and lower costs around power, thermal management, integration with building management systems, gathering more server data and managing virtualization deployments. And do it in real time." 

And according to Leerberg it goes beyond simple measuring. "This is producing a huge amount of data. Once I have that data I can begin analysing it. By analyzing it I can use it to make predictions on the impact of my plans. This will tell me how I can utilize the capacity I have in IT, network, power and cooling and how I can convert and use stranded capacity." 

Leerberg says the clever bit is to analyze what the data means, for example if the load on the UPS is 75%. What does it mean if the temperature is up by one degree? Is it trending? What impact does this have on operations?

START UP
What is equally interesting is the nature of the DCIM business within Schneider Electric. Jensen says that the business has a software start-up mentality within the context of an established corporate. Partner alliances are in place and being negotiated with global players. It is developing its own route to market through a reseller partner network. It will allow ISVs to develop plug-ins for the suite. 

In the DCIM market Jensen understands that established companies within the IT stack— IBM, HP, CA Technologies and BMC Software — have products which will do some of what StruxureWare promises. 

This is where the alliances count. IBM’s Powerexec and Maximo can talk to StruxureWare Central without any customization. Interfaces with HP Openview are in the pipeline and advanced talks with software firms such as BMC are underway. Discussions with Capgemini are also in progress. 

Like other players in this nascent market, Schneider Electric can give examples of companies which undertook data center management and derived benefits. It cites the Dutch police and an unnamed German manufacturer as having deployed its systems which could now be classed as DCIM solutions, and from which tangible benefits were derived as return on investments within months rather than years and 20% reduction in operating costs. 

Mid-sized data centers are the initial target with scale-up plans already in place. It doesnot expect all companies will want to deploy all StruxureWare for Data Center modules. This is accepted by Jensen, who says: "You can derive huge benefits by investing in the whole stack."