Major 8 Ways to Manage Your Data Centre

Fig 1: An Overview of Data Centre

Most of the businesses nowadays use data centres for keeping confidential and important information. A data centre is actually a technique used to house computer systems and related components like telecommunication and storage systems. A data centre usually consists of redundant or backup power supplies, redundant data communication connections, environment controls, various other security devices, etc.

As businesses grow, the data centres are also becoming huge and more complex. As a result the management of data centres also become a tedious and time consuming task. An efficient data centre management strategy will help you to plan updates and schedule changes in line with your data centre’s build out.

There are a number of ways in which the data centre can be effectively managed.

Data Centre Management Methods

The data centre management is a set of processes which includes computer and server operations, data security, data entry, data quality control, etc. It also deals with the management of services and applications that are utilized for data processing. Various methods are available to efficiently maintain and manage data centre for every business.
   

    1.     Unified storage system

The Unified storage systems combine support for fibre channel, iSCSI, NFS and CIFS protocols in the same hardware to cut down costs and data centre management overheads.

    2.     Server Technology

Now the server technology is becoming a hot trend in concerned with the data centre management. Frequently changing server technology and trends are seems to be challenging for administrators. Hence the newer server technology and cost efficient methods should be adopted for data centre management. This helps you to keep up with the best data centre management practices. 

   
3.     Data centre infrastructure management

The data centre infrastructure management is a separate and wider branch of management. The DCIM, Data Centre Infrastructure Management is an integration of IT and facility management disciplines to centralize monitoring, management and intelligent capacity planning of a data centre’s critical systems. DCIM supports common, real-time monitoring and management platform for all interdependent systems across IT and facility infrastructures. This is achieved through the implementation of specialized software, hardware and sensors.

Based on the type of implementation, the DCIM products can help data centre managers identify and eliminate sources of risk to improve availability of critical systems.

    4.     Ensuring Safety

A major thing to be considered while managing data centre is ensuring the safety of employees as well as data. Data centres sometimes contain numerous hazards that may adversely affect the life and health of technicians. The workers or technicians at the data centre should be properly aware about the potential safety hazards when performing maintenance activities.

    5.     Maintaining under-floor pressure

Managing a data centre also includes maintaining the under-floor pressure. To perform this, all the unnecessary openings in the raised floor should be sealed. There may be some common unmanaged openings such as structured cabling cut-outs under the cabinets, openings at building columns and gaps at perimeter building envelope, etc. Usually it is preferable to seal these areas because it will make the under-floor air pressure maintenance easier. It also helps in reducing the stress on mechanical systems.

    6.     Harness the BAS

Initially building automation systems are used only for monitoring purposes. Nowadays standard graphical user interfaces at the front end that display detailed system flows and equipment control diagrams. Latest BAS can communicate the important parameters of a data centre in real-time and at a high resolution, enabling the operator to fully visualize systems performance over any operating period. The processing speed, programming capabilities and response time of modern BAS (Building Automation Systems) offers more features and management efficiency.

    7.     Extend Energy efficiency to IT buying decisions

Information Technological equipments should be refreshed every two to three years. It should be done multiple times before planning major improvements for data centre infrastructure systems. Technology equipments are consuming the largest volume of power in the data centre and hence energy efficiency is becoming a critical factor in IT procurement decisions.

    8.     Server Virtualization concept

Server virtualizations is a software side concept which is used for increasing the utilization rates of a typical server to threefold and thus making the data centre more energy efficient. This energy efficiency is achieved by requiring a fewer servers overall to manage the same computing load. It helps to save more that 40% of energy.

The above mentioned factors are a fewer criteria to be considered while managing your own data centres. There are many more factors to be considered. For larger enterprises a number of technicians are classified into teams for managing various levels of data centre.