What is data center infrastructure management (DCIM)?

Data center infrastructure management (DCIM) comprises processes and technologies used to monitor, measure, and manage the physical and virtual infrastructure of a data center. DCIM uses tools, software and applications to track a variety of key areas in data centers, such as:

• Physical infrastructure: This type of monitoring employs methods that include sensors, cameras, and facilities management software to check the health of equipment and the status of security threats, equipment failures, and other potential anomalies.
• Capacity management: A reliable and always available power supply is a crucial requirement in a data center. DCIM software tracks power capacity, network bandwidth, rack space and cooling capacity. This helps data center operators understand when server racks are running out of space and deploy new equipment when necessary. It can also help in investigating the causes of high energy consumption and improving cooling efficiency.
• Security: DCIM monitors various aspects of security in data centers, such as:

1. 1. 1. Physical security: This includes unauthorized access and malicious activity, preventing the use of cameras, monitoring door locks and other sensors to detect intrusions and provide alerts.
      2. Environmental safety: Environmental conditions such as dust, humidity and temperature can be dangerous and threaten the smooth operation of data centers. DCIM systems help reduce equipment risk from these hazards. Equipment in data centers consumes a significant amount of energy, so it is crucial to ensure that the airflow in a data center is cooled and monitored to prevent equipment from overheating. Humidity in a data center must be within a specific range to prevent corrosion.
      3. Asset security: DCIM monitors data center assets such as storage devices, networking equipment, and servers to identify unauthorized activity on critical assets.
      4. Logical security: System logs, network traffic and other data are monitored by DCIM to alert personnel to suspicious activity, data and network breaches.

What can a DCIM monitor?

Data center infrastructure management, or DCIM, uses monitoring tools to gather asset data to help improve operational efficiencies across the organization. They can be divided into different levels, including:

1. IT Equipment (Information Technology):

• Servers: Monitors operational status, temperature, CPU utilization, memory and storage.
• Storage devices: Controls available space, performance, and data integrity.
• Network switches: Monitors connectivity, bandwidth, data traffic, and network performance.
• Routers and Firewalls: Manages network connectivity, security settings and traffic monitoring.

2. Security and Access Control:

• Access Control Systems: Monitors the entry and exit of authorized personnel, records access events and controls access to restricted areas.
• Security Cameras: Monitor security activities and events in real time, record videos and capture images for later analysis.

3. Physical Environment:

• Temperature and Humidity Sensors: Monitors environmental conditions to ensure they are within acceptable limits.
• Water Detection Sensors: Detects leaks or flooding to prevent damage to equipment.
• Smoke and Fire Sensors: Monitors the presence of smoke and triggers alarms in the event of a fire.

4. Asset Management:

• Equipment Inventory: Maintains a detailed record of all IT assets and data center infrastructure, including location information, status and maintenance history.

While DCIM (Data Center Infrastructure Management) systems play a crucial role in efficiently managing the physical and logical resources of a data center, there is still a need for a more detailed innovative and complementary approach to some levels of the infrastructure that elevates operational intelligence to a new level, such as:

Electrical Infrastructure:

• PDUs (Power Distribution Units): Monitoring and predicting power distribution problems, load, consumption and power status.
• UPSs (Uninterruptible Power Systems): Monitoring battery capacity, power status, autonomy time, early identification of anomalies.
• Generators: Controls operational status, fuel level and availability for operation in the event of a power outage, as well as control of maintenance based on equipment conditions.

Refrigeration Infrastructure:

• Air conditioning units: Monitors ambient temperature, humidity, air flow, temperature, voltage and compressor current for early prediction of problems.
• Fans: Controls operational status, rotation speed and air flow.
• Cooling towers: Monitoring and control of pumps, compressors, including water inlet and outlet temperature, voltage, current, humidity, temperature and vibration.

What are the main differences between a DCIM and Bridgemeter :

1. Focus on Anticipation and Prevention: Bridgemeter goes beyond simply monitoring and managing physical infrastructure Bridgemeter By utilizing advanced intelligence algorithms, it anticipates potential failures and anomalies, enabling proactive interventions to avoid disruptions and maximize operational availability.
2. Offering Additional Intelligence: In addition to monitoring physical parameters such as temperature and humidity, Bridgemeter offers additional intelligence through predictive analysis. It identifies patterns and trends, providing valuable insights to optimize energy efficiency, plan future capabilities, and improve data center resource utilization.
3. Interaction with the Maintenance Team: Bridgemeter Bridgemeter identified directly with the field team by generating correction tasks with relevant documentation for the equipment in question.
4. Adaptability: With its ability to adapt to new conditions and environments in real time, Bridgemeter enables rapid response to operational changes. This ensures that data center operators can make informed and agile decisions, whether regarding service or changes in monitoring intelligence/configuration.
5. Seamless Integration with DCIM: Bridgemeter Bridgemeter not replace existing DCIM systems; on the contrary, it improves them and also stands out for its connectivity and data integration by supporting more than 150 types of different communication protocols. This means that it is capable of connecting to any sensor, PLC (Programmable Logic Controller) or existing equipment in the data center, adding DICM connectivity, allowing the collection of denser and more varied information. This capability facilitates rapid system deployment, providing a more intelligent global view of data center operations. Additionally, Bridgemeter acts as a middleware for multi-sector connection, enabling seamless integration of data from different systems and equipment across the data center environment.
6. Raising the Standard of Efficiency: By offering a complete and integrated solution for data center management, Bridgemeter raises the standard of operational efficiency and reliability. Its ability to provide real-time insights and support strategic decision-making makes it an essential component for any modern data center environment.

In short, Above-Net 's Bridgemeter not only differentiates itself from traditional DCIM systems, but also elevates their effectiveness and utility by adding intelligence and advanced analytics capabilities to data center environments. By adopting Bridgemeter , organizations can achieve a new level of operational excellence and ensure maximum availability of their critical services.

Thermal Monitoring as a Data Center Monitoring Tool

Thermal monitoring is the process of collecting and analyzing data about the temperature of critical electrical assets in a data center.

Thermal monitoring is used in data centers to monitor the temperature of equipment and electrical infrastructure to prevent overheating and therefore equipment failure. This is an important element that contributes to energy availability and system uptime.

Rising temperatures, especially at electrical joints and busbars, are a warning sign that potential problems may exist, such as a loose or compromised connection. If left unchecked, there is an increased risk of electrical equipment failure, which can put personnel working in the vicinity of these critical electrical assets at greater risk. Monitoring the temperature of electrical joints and busbars not only helps prevent downtime and damage to critical infrastructure that could otherwise lead to reduced efficiency, corrupted data, or equipment failure, but can also help maintain personnel insurance around assets.

Data center operators face several challenges, but equipment overheating is one of the most critical. Equipment overheating can lead to unplanned downtime, which has a detrimental effect on service reliability for customers and leads to significant financial and reputational costs. As dependence on data increases, there is a greater need for technologies like continuous thermal monitoring to help prevent outages and avoid unplanned downtime.

The adoption of thermal monitoring in data centers is accelerating because it is helping engineering teams minimize equipment damage and reduce the likelihood of outages that can result from undetected failures.

Thermal monitoring methods in data centers

Thermal monitoring can be implemented in data centers in several ways, which include:

1. Continuous Thermal Monitoring (CTM): CTM is a condition-based monitoring approach that can replace periodic inspection using thermal imaging (IR) cameras. It is a proactive way to monitor the temperature of electrical infrastructure in data centers and other industries that use critical infrastructure. It involves using sensors to continuously measure and monitor the temperature of various electrical assets throughout the data center, providing real-time data on the health of the monitored assets. Sensors provide real-time temperature data, alerting personnel to temperature rises before they exceed safe limits. Data from these sensors can then be collected and analyzed to make intelligent decisions and identify potential failures. These sensors can be integrated into smart IoT monitoring systems providing alarms, notifications, trends and analytics, helping with predictive maintenance.
2. Thermal imaging cameras: Using thermal imaging cameras, or IR thermography, is another thermal monitoring method. These cameras capture photos of the heat emitted by electrical equipment. Hot spots and other issues that may not be obvious to the naked eye can be found using thermal cameras. This approach was historically popular, but is quickly being replaced by more predictive approaches, such as CTM, described above.
3. Audits and maintenance: This is a preventative maintenance approach that is performed at regular periods to ensure that refrigeration, HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning) systems and other critical infrastructure are operating optimally.

Benefits of thermal monitoring for data centers

• Prevent overheating: Hot spots and overheating are leading causes of data center equipment failures. Strategically placed sensors continuously take temperature readings in multiple locations, including server racks and bus or bus distribution systems. The system indicates when temperatures exceed established limits. Thermal monitoring helps prevent data center equipment from overheating.
• Increase equipment longevity: Critical data center equipment such as server racks, switchboards and storage devices can benefit from extended lifespan when asset temperature and facility humidity are monitored and controlled. Over time, this results in reduced maintenance costs for critical equipment.
• Prevent unexpected power outages: Power outages are often unplanned, and downtime is disruptive and costly for data centers. Implementing continuous thermal monitoring of critical assets alerts personnel to potential risks before failure.
• Improve productivity: With early detection of compromised joints and connections in electrical assets, power outages are reduced. Data centers are significantly dependent on power availability. Temperature monitoring of critical electrical connections improves equipment reliability, helping to improve performance and productivity.

Building greater resilience into data centers is critical so that owners and operators can run reliable, sustainable facilities that meet future demands. Maintaining electrical efficiency and safety are essential; Therefore, monitoring the temperature of critical assets helps you understand where potential failures in critical equipment are likely to occur before an outage. Temperature monitoring alerts provide information that can be used to schedule predictive maintenance and a more proactive approach for operational personnel.

Read too:

Revolutionizing the Maintenance of Cold Rooms, Refrigerators and Refrigerators 

Above-Net advances with more Smart IIoT installations for sanitation