USE CASES

colocation

Autonomizing Data Centers

WHAT ARE THE OPERATIONAL CHALLENGES FACING COLO OPERATORS?

Whether Retail or Wholesale the challenge is the same in an increasingly commoditized market – How to differentiate offerings in order to attract new customers.

We know that colocation operators vary in size, from small single-digit MW buildings (1,000,000 Watts) to large 100MW+ campus operators. All have different drivers. Often the larger operators are Real Estate Investments Trusts (REITs), with a focus on maximizing the value of a property portfolio as a specific property asset class rather than a primary focus on the provision of data center services.

XpedITe is designed to improve both operational performance and business processes to improve resource utilization as well as supporting senior management decision-making to provide benefit to the top and bottom line as well as making life easier for both operator and tenant. In each instance this will result in a measurable return on investment.

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scenario: closing
down the silos and inefficency

Author: mark acton

Data centers of all kinds are designed, built and operated for one purpose alone - to reliably and securely host the Computer, Storage and Network resources providing the digital services upon which we are all now so dependent in our daily lives.

The customers of colocation sites install business critical equipment and become dependent upon the way that colocation sites are managed and yet traditionally have had very little visibility in the data and information used to manage these sites effectively.

Traditional Facilities Management teams continue to manage and maintain the building and the critical supporting infrastructure within it. These elements provide a secure space and support the delivery of the critical power and cooling resources on which the installed customer ICT equipment is totally dependent. These teams generally have no visibility of the hosted Information Technology equipment, or the expertise to understand the operation or management of this hosted equipment.

On the other hand, the Computer, Storage and Networking equipment in data centers tends to be looked after by traditional IT teams that have little visibility of the critical infrastructure providing the power and cooling upon which their services depend. There is the potential for limited power and cooling resources to be used inefficiently or even squandered, exposing organizations to significant additional costs, potential Corporate Social Responsibility criticism, due to environmental impact, and the ongoing threat of Business Continuity issues when limited critical resources become depleted or unavailable.

This siloed approach to data center management has persisted for decades now and continues to be the commonly applied operational structure in most data centers - despite repeated expert advice from across the sector strongly advocating improved operating models for over a decade.

colocation data centER solution: bridging the gaps

A true Universal Intelligent Infrastructure Management (UIIM) system (RiT Tech's DCIM evolution) is essential to enable these suggested new operating models. However, the reality is that there can be no genuine UIIM system unless the gaps highlighted above are taken into account and the tools deployed include integration with the IT stack. Additionally, the move towards distributed, digital infrastructures and hybrid environments is one of the most significant shifts in the data center sector, which potentially necessitates the overview and orchestration of infrastructure environments across multiple sites. These might include self-owned and operated sites (Enterprise), third-party (Colocation) sites and unmanned remote (Edge), sites.

The expectation is now that a true UIIM system needs to seamlessly integrate all the data of these different infrastructure elements into a ‘Single Source of Truth’ view of multiple sites and different types of ICT deployment.

The granularity of Retail Colocation in particular creates a demonstrable need for a fully functioning UIIM system. Not simply an enhanced BMS or spreadsheet with an attractive GUI. Rather a toolset that offers true visibility to both site operators and owners as well as their customers.

Customers with relatively small deployments, possibly even individual cabinets will not have their own staff on site, so will therefore be using third-parties more frequently. These third parties will require management tools to provide risk-free and problem free equipment installations, moves, adds and changes (IMACs). Without staff on site, both the environmental parameters and IT hardware performance will also require to be actively monitored and potentially managed. This is where XpedITe adds value.

These sites are also likely to be visited less regularly so will need better monitoring and management than a traditional Enterprise data center.

HOW DOES COLO RETAIL DIFFER FROM COLO WHOLESALE OPERATORS?

How does UIIM address multiple colo challenges?

Retail Colocation operators are likely to have customers occupying individual or even partial cabinets - creating the need for one central data system that provides complete visibility of all site activity from work orders to confident and accurate control over all assets.

For Wholesale operators who tend to offer leases on entire buildings or significant percentages of buildings, which may have been built to suit specific customers, the main aim is to ensure that customers have complete visibility of the capacity and activity within their data halls and can accurately manage tasks and work orders remotely without waste of resources or duplication of effort.

Improved customer service is one way to differentiate: The one common experience by both is that the majority of colocation operators are increasingly seeking to differentiate themselves from their competitors by offering varying degrees of value added services. XpedITe is the perfect mechanism to achieve this ambition.

Until very recently there were no tools available that could offer the full feature set of a true DCIM system. The siloed approach to data center management meant there were no tools that could offer an holistic view to both colocation operators and their customers.

This is no longer the case. XpedITe takes many of the features of the traditional DCIM solution and it is now moving into the IT stack, as well as integrating with existing systems, such as ITAM, CMDB and cloud-based solutions. XpedITe is capable of offering the ability to analyze multiple data sets across sites and provide intelligent solutions for managing the data center throughout the entire stack, from the BMS, to the IT equipment and through to application performance.

This rich features' set and full integration across the entire data center stack provides the opportunity to offer a value added service that will be seen as a key differentiator for colocation providers and a key element to reducing operational overhead and deriving maximum benefit from their colocation provider by their customers.

SCENARIO: CLOSING
DOWN THE SILOS AND INEFFICENCY

AUTHOR: MARK ACTON

On the other hand, the Compute, Storage and Networking equipment in data centers tends to be looked after by traditional IT teams that have little visibility of the critical infrastructure providing the power and cooling upon which their services depend. There is the potential for limited power and cooling resources to be used inefficiently or even squandered, exposing organizations to significant additional costs, potential Corporate Social Responsibility criticism, due to environmental impact, and the ongoing threat of Business Continuity issues when limited critical resources become depleted or unavailable.

COLOCATION DATA CENTRE SOLUTION: BRIDGING THE GAPS

These sites are also likely to be visited less regularly so will need better monitoring and management than a traditional Enterprise data center.

HOW DOES COLO RETAIL DIFFER FROM COLO WHOLESALE OPERATORS?

HOW DOES UIIM ADDRESS MULTIPLE COLO CHALLENGES?

BEJING SUBWAY

“The value that RiT Tech and their DCIM software, XpedITe has brought to our operations is not only top-level technology and high quality products but the most important achievement is the impact it has had on our day-to-day provisioning and work orders. Through the software, we can design and simulate all connectivity tasks that are integrated with our intelligent hardware - avoiding human error and making our operations safe and efficient.”

- Ms. Zhao, Chief Technical Officer, Beijing Metro Network Control Center

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KEY FEATURES

DATA CENTEr INFRASTRUCTURE

MANAGEMENT (DCIM)

Through Integration, Automation and Transparency, XpedITe helps to reduce costs and run operations more efficiently. In order to help you Data Center achieve maximum uptime.

ASSET MANAGEMENT

Offering an Accurate and Comprehensive View of All Data Centre Assets

Asset management is one of the critical DCIM pillars providing a reliable digital representation for infrastructure, as well as end-to-end change and service management functionality.

Capacity
Planning

Including Trending and Prediction

XpedITe gathers, processes and analyzes data from the building and IT infrastructure and all inter-dependencies to offer a comprehensive multi-layer capacity utilization displayed in 2D or 3D visual layers, capacity dashboards and reports for intuitive and comprehensive capacity management.

Rapid
Provisioning

Reducing Time to Market and Resource Overhead

Create, assign and audit all provisioning and maintenance tasks within a unified tool using XpedITe and integrate with external ticketing systems to manage changes in an effective way with reduced resource overhead and timeframes.

Intelligent Management

More than Simply Monitoring and Alerting

Through automation and machine learning, our tool turns information into solutions, enabling operators to make informed decisions that boost the bottom line: enhancing availability, streamlining consumption and optimizing reliability and productivity overall.

VIEW ALL CAPABILITIES

find out more

in our helpful capabilities guide

XpedITe is the only data center infrastructure management system (DCIM) on the market which gives our clients a solution that connects infrastructure and network in one platform. Our multi award-winning XpedITe provides the integration capabilities needed to enable universal intelligent infrastructure management (UIIM). XpedITe is used by progressive data centers across the globe from colocation to enterprises, including large corporations, government agencies, financial institutions, airport authorities, healthcare organizations, educational facilities and telecommunications.

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