Data centers are the backbone of modern digital infrastructure, housing the servers, storage, networks and other IT components that power our online world As organizations become increasingly reliant on data center operations, effective data center management is crucial This article will explain what data center management entails, why it matters, and provide an overview of best practices.
What Does Data Center Management Involve?
Data center management refers to the tasks processes and tools used to operate and maintain private data center environments. It encompasses both facilities management of the physical infrastructure and IT management of the hardware and software.
Some key responsibilities include
- Lifecycle management – Installing, maintaining, upgrading and decommissioning IT infrastructure components
- Monitoring – Tracking metrics like utilization, performance, security and energy usage
- IT service management – Ensuring service level agreements (SLAs) are met
- Troubleshooting – Identifying and quickly resolving any IT issues or outages
- Security – Safeguarding data center systems and information
- Compliance – Adhering to regulatory policies and standards
- Capacity planning – Forecasting growth and ensuring the data center can scale appropriately
- Resource optimization – Maximizing compute, storage, network and staff resources
- Cost management – Controlling expenses related to facilities, energy, hardware/software
- Disaster recovery – Implementing backup systems and processes
Handling these broad responsibilities requires using data center infrastructure management (DCIM) software tools.
Why is Data Center Management Important?
Effective data center management is critical for:
- Availability – Ensuring digital services and applications are accessible whenever users need them
- Performance – Providing responsive experiences with adequate computing capacity
- Scalability – Supporting usage growth and fluctuations in demand
- Efficiency – Optimizing resource utilization and energy consumption
- Agility – Quickly adapting infrastructure to changing business needs
- Resilience – Minimizing disruptions from outages or disasters through redundancy
- Security – Protecting sensitive systems and data from breaches or attacks
- Cost Savings – Reducing expenses related to hardware, software, energy, staffing
- Compliance – Adhering to industry regulations around security, privacy, environmental impact
Without proper data center management, organizations risk application downtime, poor performance, inadequate security, excessive costs, and inability to scale.
Best Practices for Data Center Management
Here are some key best practices for effectively managing a modern data center environment:
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Leverage DCIM software – This centralized platform monitors, controls and optimizes data center components. DCIM improves visibility, workflow automation, capacity planning and more.
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Perform audits and maintenance – Regularly audit configurations and perform preventative maintenance to maximize uptime.
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Follow IT service management frameworks – Use practices like ITIL to align data center operations with business needs.
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Monitor extensively – Collect real-time performance metrics related to capacity, power, cooling, traffic flow and security.
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Analyze capacity proactively – Look ahead to forecast demand and determine infrastructure requirements.
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Standardize processes – Document procedures for common tasks to ensure consistency.
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Prioritize redundancy – Eliminate single points of failure and build in backup systems.
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Secure physically and digitally – Use controls like video surveillance, access cards, firewalls, encryption, etc.
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Consolidate resources – Virtualization and cloud bursting help optimize computing power.
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Colocate when possible – Leverage third-party data center hosting and management services.
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Allocate costs – Use showback/chargeback models to allot costs to business units based on utilization.
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Staff appropriately – Data center specialists should handle daily operations and IT oversees infrastructure.
Challenges Faced by Data Center Managers
Data center managers encounter a variety of challenges including:
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Complexity – Data centers comprise many hardware, software, networking and facility elements from multiple vendors. This makes management intricate.
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Monitoring Gaps – With limited visibility, it’s difficult to assess capacity, utilization, performance and dependencies.
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Maintaining Uptime – The many interdependencies within a data center make disruption hard to avoid.
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Cost Control – Power, cooling, real estate and labor put pressure on limited budgets.
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Scalability – Data center footprint and power capacity can limit the ability to scale smoothly.
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Inefficient Processes – Manual approaches or poor communication lead to waste and delays.
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Security & Compliance – Lack of controls around access, encryption and auditing can create risks.
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Limited Resources – Budgets often restrict equipment upgrades, staff expansion and redundancy.
How Organizations Can Improve Data Center Management
Here are some ways organizations can enhance how they manage data centers:
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Implement DCIM software – Gain centralized visibility and control to simplify management.
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Use third-party colocation services – Outsource facilities infrastructure to specialized providers.
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Automate processes – Remove manual efforts to boost efficiency and consistency.
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Adopt ITSM practices – Support services like incident, problem, change and release management.
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Right-size and distribute resources – Allocate capacity based on actual demand using virtualization.
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Apply workload management – Dynamically distribute workloads for optimal performance and efficiency.
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Retire legacy hardware – Swap outdated servers and storage systems for modern efficient infrastructure.
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Analyze metrics extensively – Collect and monitor detailed analytics to guide optimizations.
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Develop staff skills – Train personnel on the latest data center technologies and best practices.
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Leverage cloud and hybrid IT – Shift appropriate workloads to the cloud while maintaining core on-premises systems.
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Prioritize green initiatives – Use more efficient cooling designs, renewable energy sources and virtualization.
Key Takeaways
Data center management encompasses the many IT and facilities disciplines required to keep these mission-critical environments running optimally. Though complex, proper data center management leads to high availability, efficiency, resilience and cost savings.
Data center managers face challenges like complexity, limited visibility, and constrained resources. Mastering best practices around capacity planning, redundancy, security, sustainability, automation, staff skills, and DCIM usage enables organizations to overcome these hurdles.
With digital infrastructure more vital than ever, modernizing data center management strategies is crucial for business success. Resources like DCIM software, colocation services, workload management and hybrid cloud models provide next-generation data center management capabilities.
What is the role of a data center manager?
Either physically onsite or remotely, a data center manager performs general maintenance—such as software and hardware upgrades, general cleaning or deciding the physical arrangement of servers—and takes proactive or reactive measures against any threat or event that harms data center performance, security and compliance.
The typical responsibilities of a data center manager include the following:
- Performing lifecycle tasks like installing and decommissioning equipment
- Maintaining service level agreements (SLAs)
- Ensuring licensing and contractual obligations are met
- Identifying and resolving IT problems like connection issues between edge computing devices and the data center
- Securing data center networks and ensuring backup systems and processes are in place for disaster recovery
- Monitoring the data center environment’s energy efficiency (e.g., lighting, cooling, etc.)
- Managing and allocating resources to maximize budgetary spending and performance
- Determining optimal server arrangement and cabling organization
- Planning emergency contingencies in case of natural disaster or other unplanned downtime
- Making necessary updates and repairs to systems while minimizing downtime and impact to IT operations and business functions (also known as change management)
Certification programs exist for IT students and professionals who want to acquire or enhance the skills and knowledge necessary to succeed in data center management.
How to overcome the challenges of data center management
Data center managers can use a data center infrastructure management (DCIM) solution to simplify their management tasks and achieve IT performance optimization. DCIM software provides a centralized platform where data center managers can monitor, measure, manage and control all elements of a data center in real-time—from on-premises IT components to data center facilities like heating, cooling and lighting.
With a DCIM solution, data center managers gain a single, streamlined view over their data center and can better understand what’s happening throughout the IT infrastructure.
A DCIM solution provides visibility into the following:
- Power and cooling status
- Which IT equipment and software components are ready for upgrading
- Licensing/contractual terms and SLAs for all components
- Device health and security status
- Energy consumption and power management
- Network bandwidth and server capacity
- Use of floor space
- Location of all physical data center assets
A DCIM solution can also help data center managers adopt virtualization to combine and better manage their data center’s IT resources. More advanced DCIM solutions can even automate tasks and eliminate manual steps, freeing up the data center manager’s time and reducing costs.
A colocation data center is a third-party service that provides an organization with physical space and facility management for their private servers and associated IT assets. While the organization is still responsible for staffing and for managing their data center components, a colocation service offloads the burden and costs associated with building, running and maintaining a physical space.
Fundamentals of Data Center Operations | Data Center Management
What is data center management?
Managing the physical infrastructure of a data center is another primary task within the domain of data center management. The physical infrastructure includes the power and cooling required for regular operations, as well as backup systems for disaster recovery, power interruptions, and security and access control to the data center premises.
How do you manage a data center?
That said, managing a data center fundamentally relies on both the individual members of a data center management team and the clear definition of a statement of work. Almost all data centers will require a team that is skilled and experienced in the management of electrical, thermal, and network systems.
What is a data center & how does it work?
Data centers are increasingly complex facilities to operate, involving the management of hardware, software, services and physical infrastructure. On the hardware side, data centers include many types of equipment, including compute and storage hardware that needs to be managed for ongoing operations.
What is a managed data center?
In a managed data center, the client company leases dedicated servers, storage and networking hardware from the data center provider, and the data center provider handles the administration, monitoring and management for the client company.
