Asset Management Tools - 2013

The key to effective asset management tools of data centers can see the complete picture and know what you have, where everything is and how it's all connected. The principle sounds simple enough, but put into action, and it is in your own business is another matter. Implementation raises a number of important issues for data center planners. How important are asset management tools and practices in modern data centers? How do fit the asset management system comes with a total management systems? What are the problems and limitations with the asset management tools or processes today? What is the ROI or other payment, and is worth the difficulties in implementation? And where data center asset management is in the future going? We turned to the SearchDataCenter.com Advisory Board to help answer these questions and provide insight into the asset management market.

Matt Stansberry, director of content and publications, Uptime Institute

I spoke with David Humphrey and Rich Van Loo, Uptime Institute Professional Services consultants. Both survived asset management software implementations in their previous occupation as data center managers They said only a few people are always happy with these tools.

Asset management tools are often part of another system - maintenance management software, a system management framework, property management and facility management - not built a tool for data center use. So they take a lot of effort to implement. With Data Infrastructure Management (DCIM) tools that providers closer to you. With a complete picture of what you need to keep track of, but they are not quite there yet

Come and Humphrey Van Loo said asset management software vendors and can show you all the tools to do their reports, but they do not tell you to take it five man-years of effort to populate the reports. Many data center managers not sat down and figured out what they want the information systems. How do you use the reports? What are the benefits for your company? Why did you create this data, if you do not plan to use it?

Humphrey and Van Loo recommended that start data center managers with an Excel spreadsheet for a year or two, so that the IT staff can find out exactly what data want to keep them, and then they can become one of the software tools in need to move.

A modern data center without some sort of asset management, database or other tracking system is a mess. You must be able to know exactly where a system, how it is connected with the rest of the network, turn on what ports it is using and so on. The best asset management tools that I have seen were homemade, commercial offerings I had been inflated with and slowly work with ridiculous system requirements and price tags have.