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 on data centers, such as:

• Physical Infrastructure: This type of monitoring employs methods that include sensors, cameras, and installation management software to verify equipment health and safety threat status, equipment failures and other potential anomalies.
• Capacity Management: A reliable and always available power supply is a crucial requirement on a data center. DCIM Software tracks energy capacity, network bandwidth, rack space and cooling capacity. This helps Data Center operators understand when server racks are running out of space and deploying new equipment when needed. It can also help investigate the causes of high energy consumption and improve cooling efficiency.
• Security: DCIM monitors various aspects of security on data centers, such as:

1. 1. 1. Physical Security: This includes unauthorized access and malicious activities, preventing the use of cameras, monitoring door locks and other sensors to detect intrusions and provide alerts.
      2. Environmental Security: Environmental conditions such as dust, humidity and temperature can be dangerous and threaten the soft functioning of the data centers. DCIM systems help reduce the risk of equipment in these dangers. Data centers equipment consumes a significant amount of energy, so it is crucial to ensure that the air flow on a data center is cooled and monitored to avoid overheating of equipment. The moisture on a data center must be within a specific range to avoid corrosion.
      3. Asset Safety: DCIM monitors data center assets such as storage devices, network equipment and servers to identify unauthorized activities in critical assets.
      4. Logic Safety: System logs, network traffic, and other data are monitored by DCIM to alert personnel on suspicious activities, data and network violations.

What can a DCIM monitor?

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

1. IT Equipment (Information Technology):

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

2. Access security and control:

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

3. Physical environment:

• Temperature and humidity sensors: Monitor environmental conditions to ensure that they are within acceptable limits.
• Water Detection Sensors: Detects leaks or floods to prevent equipment damage.
• Smoke and fire sensors: monitors the presence of smoke and fires alarms in case of fire.

4. Asset Management:

• Equipment Inventory: Maintains a detailed record of all IT and Data Center's assets, including location information, status and maintenance history.

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

Electric infrastructure:

• PDUs (energy distribution units): monitoring and prediction of energy distribution problems, load, consumption and food status.
• UPSS (uninterrupted power systems): battery capacity monitoring, power status, autonomy time, early anomalies identification.
• Generators: Controls operational status, fuel level and availability for power drop operation, as well as control of equipment based on equipment conditions.

Cooling infrastructure:

• Air Conditioning Units: monitors ambient temperature, humidity, air flow, temperature, voltage and compressor current aiming at the early prediction of problems.
• Fans: Controls operational status, rotation speed and airflow.
• Refrigeration towers: monitoring and control of pumps, compressors, including water inlet temperature and output, 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 simple monitoring and management of physical infrastructure. By using advanced intelligence algorithms, it anticipates potential failures and anomalies, allowing proactive interventions to avoid interruptions and maximize operational availability.
2. Additional Intelligence Offer: 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 capacities, and improve the use of data center resources.
3. Interaction with Maintenance Team: Bridgemeter speeds up and reduces the problem correction time identified directly with the field team generating correction tasks with relevant equipment in question.
4. Adaptability: With its ability to adapt to new conditions and environments in real time, Bridgemeter allows a quick response to operational changes. This ensures that Data Center operators can make informed and agile decisions, either by the service or changes in intelligence/monitoring configuration
5. Perfect Integration with DCIM: Bridgemeter does not replace existing DCIM systems; On the contrary, it enhances them and also stands out for the connectivity and data integration by providing support to over 150 different types of communication protocols. This means that it is able to connect to any sensor, PLC (Programmable Logic Controller) or Data Center equipment, adding DICM connectivity, allowing the collection of more dense and varied information. This capacity facilitates a rapid implementation of the system by providing a smarter global view of Data Center's operations. In addition, Bridgemeter acts as a Middleware for Multisetorial Connection, allowing the perfect integration of data from different systems and equipment throughout the Data Center environment.
6. Raising the efficiency standard: By offering a complete and integrated solution for data centers management, Bridgemeter raises the efficiency pattern and operational reliability. Your ability to provide real -time insights and support strategic decision making makes it an essential component for any modern data center environment.

In short, the Above-Net Bridgemeter not only differs from traditional DCIM systems, but also raises its effectiveness and usefulness, adding intelligence and advanced analysis skills to data center environments. By adopting Bridgemeter, organizations can reach a new level of operational excellence and ensure the maximum availability of their critical services.

Thermal monitoring as a data center monitoring tool

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

Thermal monitoring is used on data centers to monitor the temperature of equipment and electric infrastructure to avoid overheating and therefore equipment failure. This is an important element that contributes to energy availability and system activity time.

Increased temperature, especially in the joints and electrical buses, is a warning sign that there may be potential problems, such as a loose or compromised connection. If not verified, there is an increased risk of electrical equipment failure, which can put the people who work around these critical electrical actives at a higher risk. Joint temperature monitoring and electrical buses help not only to avoid inactivity time and damage to critical infrastructure that can otherwise lead to reduced efficiency, corrupted data or equipment failure, but can also help maintain staff insurance around the assets.

Data Center operators face various challenges, but the equipment overheating is one of the most critical. Overheating of the equipment can lead to non -planned inactivity time, which has a harmful effect on customer service reliability and leads to significant financial and reputation costs. As data dependence increases, there is a greater need for technologies such as continuous thermal monitoring to help prevent interruptions and avoid non -planned inactivity time.

Adoption of thermal monitoring on data centers is accelerating because it is helping engineering teams to minimize equipment damage and reduce the likelihood of interruptions that may result from uncontected failures.

Thermal Monitoring Methods on Data Centers

Thermal monitoring can be implemented on data centers in a variety of ways, including:

1. Continuous Thermal Monitoring (CTM): CTM is a condition -based monitoring approach that can replace periodic inspection using thermal image cameras (IR). It is a proactive way to monitor the temperature of the electric infrastructure on data centers and other industries that use critical infrastructure. It involves the use of sensors to continually measure and monitor the temperature of various electrical assets throughout the data center, providing real -time data on the health of monitored assets. Sensors provide real -time temperature data, alerting staff on temperature increases before they exceed safe limits. The data of these sensors can then be collected and analyzed to make intelligent decisions and identify potential failures. These sensors can be integrated into intelligent IoT monitoring systems providing alarms, notifications, trends and analysis, helping in predictive maintenance.
2. Thermal Image Cameras: The use of thermal image cameras, or IR thermography, is another method of thermal monitoring. These cameras capture pictures of the heat emitted by electrical equipment. Hot points and other problems that may not be obvious to the naked eye can be found using thermal cameras. This approach was historically popular, but is being quickly replaced by more predictive approaches, such as CTM, described above.
3. Audits and Maintenance: This is a preventive maintenance approach that is performed at regular periods to ensure that cooling systems, HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) and other critical infrastructures are operating optimally.

Benefits of Thermal Monitoring for Data Centers

• Preventing overheating: Hot points and overheating are main causes of failure in data center equipment. Strategically positioned sensors do temperature readings continuously in various locations, including server racks and bus or bus distribution systems. The system indicates when temperatures exceed the established limits. Thermal monitoring helps prevent the overheating of the data center equipment.
• Increase equipment longevity: Data Center critical equipment, such as server racks, distribution frames, and storage devices, can benefit from an extended lifetime when asset temperature and installation humidity are monitored and controlled. Over time, this results in reduced maintenance costs of critical equipment.
• Preventing unexpected energy interruptions: Energy interruptions are generally not planned, and inactivity time is harmful and costly for data centers. The implementation of continuous thermal monitoring of critical assets warns staff on potential risks before failure.
• Improve productivity: With early detection of joints and connections committed to electrical assets, power interruptions are reduced. Data centers depend significantly on energy availability. Critical electrical connection temperature monitoring improves equipment reliability, helping to improve performance and productivity.

Building greater data centers resilience is critical for owners and operators to perform reliable and sustainable facilities that meet future demands. Maintaining efficiency and electrical safety are essential; Therefore, monitoring of critical asset temperature helps to understand where potential failures in critical equipment will probably occur before an interruption. Temperature monitoring alerts provide information that can be used to schedule predictive maintenance and a more proactive approach to operational staff.

Also read:

Revolutionizing the maintenance of cold chambers, refrigerators and refrigerators 

Above-Net advances with more intelligent IIOT installations for sanitation