Capacity Optimization and Analytics
“You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” One company’s critical capacity is another’s irrelevant metric. Cormant-CS DCIM comes out-of-the-box with over fifty capacity data points. These can then be added to or removed as required to meet the business needs of each enterprise. Cormant-CS supports unlimited external data capture, and aggregation, along with robust reporting, visual dashboards, trending and alerting. Data can be exchanged with external systems such as CMDB or network monitoring solutions. A typical enterprise may begin with a core set of metrics that address immediate challenges and then expand those over time.
Capacity Planning Metrics
While not a complete list of possible metrics used for capacity management, some of the more typical measurements captured in Cormant-CS are delivered as part of the out-of-the-box solution.
Metrics Cormant-CS can capture and calculate include:
- Rack Units: free/used/contagious space
- Power: actual, plate, de-rated
- Circuit capacity
- Real time capacity data from any equipment or sensor
- Port and data connections: free, used, type, service
- Cooling capacity and distribution
- Free/used floor space
- Blades, cards and slots in chassis
- Rooms capacity; IDF/MDF/Campus spaces
- Virtual servers and their distribution
- VLAN/Rack Pod/Service Environments
- On-order and in-stock equipment and allocation
- Cable inventory
- Free outlets across a campus
- Backbone and conduit use
- Historical trends
- Changes planned
- In transit equipment between sites
- Capacity true-up audits using mobility and/or network discovery
- Industry metrics, including: PUE, DCSE, DCOI (Fed Gov)
Keeping Capacity Data Accurate
Data in Cormant-CS DCIM has to be accurate to be useful, and to be useful it has to be easy to update; a founding principle of Cormant-CS. Cormant-CS enables easy updates, by
- Strong simple UI, to enter data and also to use the data entered, so people want to use it
- Full on-line and off-line mobility with RFID and Barcode scanning for quick and simple updates as change is made and full scan based mobile auditing
- Network discovery to link physical to discovery data
- Change management and links to CMDB and ITSM systems.
- External devices/sensors
Data Consumption and Visualization
- Full, widget-based, user-configurable dashboards of historical and current data.
- Three-dimensional floor plans and rack elevations, including user-defined capacity color coding of rack and equipment.
- Comparison of multiple metrics of a similar type, e.g. power plate, actual and estimated per device, rack and data center
- Custom reports, including a full built-in report writer.
- Scheduled reporting and exports in multiple formats.
- Alerting on user-defined capacity points
- Work-flow location selector, providing guidance on the best permitted location for new equipment. Criteria can be configured to meet each enterprise custom requirements.
- Full de-normalized historical data capture for long term trending.
- Full life-cycle equipment and asset data to port level to see history of an asset from order to disposal, including every change made to any data element.
- Two-way Interfaces to external systems.
Contact Cormant for a personal evaluation of your needs and tailored live product demonstration.
Cormant’s dedicated staff can help tailor the right package of software and services for you and will then deliver a fully implemented solution to your enterprise.