How Modern DCIM Addresses CIO Management Challenges within Distributed, Hybrid IT Environments

Executive summary The role of today’s CIO is expanding and becoming more challenging. The days of managing a single enterprise data center are over. Business requirements are forcing CIOs to hybridize their data center and IT portfolio architecture by placing IT capacity in colocation facilities and building out capacity at the local edge – sometimes in a big way. In ad- dition to managing and maintaining resilient and secure op- erations at all these sites, they are now being asked to re- port on the sustainability of their IT operations. Software management tools need to evolve in order for CIOs to do their jobs effectively. Through examples, the paper explains how modern DCIM platforms are a critical tool for making hybrid enterprise IT more resilient, secure, and sustainable.

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How Modern DCIM Addresses CIO Management Challenges within Distributed, Hybrid IT Environments

It is widely reported1,2 that the role of a Chief Information Officer (CIO) is experienc- ing a sea change. IT is now at the center of business strategy as digital technolo- gies power and sustain the global economy. The criticality of IT in every aspect of business has driven CIOs from just filling the tactical role of deploying, operating, and maintaining IT to also focusing on business strategy. CIOs increasingly have a leading role in driving business innovation, aligning IT projects with business goals, digitalizing business operations, and leading corporate organization change pro- grams, for example. This role expansion has made their job more critical and com- plex. What has not been as widely reported, however, is that the traditional CIO role of IT service delivery has become more critical and complex as well. After all, a CIO’s impact on business strategy and execution depends on continuous IT service deliv- ery. As shown in Figure 1, the success of a CIO is ultimately rooted in a solid foun- dation of maintaining resilient, secure, and sustainable IT operations. But, in an en- vironment of highly distributed hybrid IT, this becomes harder to do.

IT Service Delivery Role

Power & cooling infrastructure

Servers, storage & networking

Workloads, apps & services

Business Role

Innovate & digitalize

RESILIENT SECURE SUSTAINABLE

• Offers & services • Business models • Engagement • Experience • Brand / image

CIO success depends on a solid foundation IMPACT ON CUSTOMERS,

PARTNERS, INVESTORS

Modern data center infrastructure management (DCIM) software, optimized for dis- tributed environments, plays an important role in maintaining this foundation for hy- brid data center environments with distributed IT infrastructure. In this paper, we first describe the evolution of enterprise IT portfolios and the management chal- lenges that result. We then explain how DCIM software has also evolved and pro- vide real-world examples to demonstrate how DCIM improves resiliency, enhances both physical and cybersecurity, and drives progress on environmental sustainabil- ity goals. From ce n tra lize d , on-p re mis e to d is tribu te d , hybrid IT From the 1990s through the early 2000s, for a given enterprise corporation, IT port- folios tended to be contained in a few centralized, on-premise data centers. This changed, of course, when cloud computing and data center colocation providers emerged and became widespread. Today enterprises increasingly have both

1 https://www.digital-adoption.com/cio-role/ 2 https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/cio-role-changing-heres-whats-horizon

Introduction

Evolution of enterprise data center and IT portfolios

Figure 1 CIO success in both their business and traditional roles of IT service delivery are dependent on main- taining resilient, secure, and sustainable IT opera- tions. DCIM is a critical tool for building and sus- taining that foundation.

https://www.digital-adoption.com/cio-role/ https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/cio-role-changing-heres-whats-horizon

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How Modern DCIM Addresses CIO Management Challenges within Distributed, Hybrid IT Environments

owned and leased IT physical and virtual assets spread across many more loca- tions. This is referred to as “hybrid IT” or “hybrid computing environments”. This growing sophistication complicates operations and maintenance by making it more difficult for CIOs and their operations teams to maintain visibility and control over all assets and view them in aggregate. This geographic distribution of IT infrastructure and assets is further intensifying due to the growth of critical IT deployments at the edge of networks. Digitalization, the need to reduce network latency, and the desire to reduce network bandwidth costs, are working together to drive more enterprise IT compute and storage ca- pacity deployments at the ends of the network, closer to users. White Paper 226, The Drivers and Benefits of Edge Computing, delves further into this. These edge computing deployments are being done by cloud and colocation providers, as well as by enterprises themselves. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) predicts (see Fig- ure 2) that by 2025, 50% of enterprise compute will be at the edge of the network with only 20% in core, on-premise data centers and the rest in the public cloud3. This means the typical enterprise now exists in a very complex hybrid IT environ- ment with power & cooling infrastructure systems and IT assets highly distributed across an increasing number of sites, many of which are small, unstaffed, and oper- ated in a “lights out” fashion.

By 2025… The distributed enterprise

In 2000… The core-driven enterprise

100% 20% 30% 50%

Note, all of this is further complicated, of course, by the fact that CIOs must also keep track of and manage IT assets increasingly used for work-from-home (WFH) and other remote work scenarios. Although this is generally outside the scope of data center infrastructure management (DCIM) software tools today, and so is out- side the scope of this paper, some more advanced residential UPSs are able to col- lect and report energy information that could be used for sustainability metrics across the WFH population. The additional complication of managing widely distrib- uted WFH IT makes effective software management tools more of an imperative since good tools simplify and automate management tasks. This complex environment creates unique management challenges for your IT infra- structure management team. Table 1 lists some of the more common difficulties that arise.

3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IouhGfmHSZE

Figure 2 HPE predicts a highly distributed, hybrid IT environment for enterprises

https://download.schneider-electric.com/files?p_File_Name=VAVR-A4M867_R0_EN.pdf&p_Doc_Ref=SPD_VAVR-A4M867_EN https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IouhGfmHSZE

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How Modern DCIM Addresses CIO Management Challenges within Distributed, Hybrid IT Environments

These challenges can present themselves in many ways. Here are some examples we have heard… • Having to calculate the carbon footprint of IT operations • Trying to remotely troubleshoot a problem with a store clerk or security guard • Making sense of a storm of “UPS on battery” – “UPS online” alarms • Getting a call that “something” is beeping or flashing its lights • Figuring out how to deploy security patch updates to dozens or hundreds of

sites • Servers unexpectedly rebooting at a site while service personnel perform

maintenance, but no way to know for sure if they caused it • Trying to forecast power capacity needs during budget cycle time • Wondering who is accessing remote IT installations • Having enough IT staffing resources to manage all these tasks (without soft-

ware management tools) • Having visibility into IT infrastructure at colocation sites

There has been a shift in CIO focus and in the management priorities of their opera- tions teams. New management priorities and responsibilities in turn, places new re- quirements on DCIM software tools today. CIOs must focus more on maintaining re- siliency and security in more places, as well as tracking and improving environmen- tal sustainability of IT operations overall. It is not that these topics were unknown or unimportant before, but the complex, distributed nature of hybrid IT along with the enterprise’s increasing dependence on all IT make these tasks more challenging and imperative today.

Challenge Description & impact

Vis ibility of multip le , geogra phica lly d is pe rs ed s ite s

Inability to see all assets in aggregate and remain situationally aware of what is happening particularly with adds, moves, changes, and security patch/firm- ware updates. Not knowing aggregate environmen- tal sustainability impact or security status of infra- structure assets.

La cking on-s ite s ta ff

Lack of on-site visibility and an inability to respond to problems; Being unaware of who might be access- ing equipment. Increased likelihood of unplanned downtime, cost to maintain, and time to resolve is- sues.

Re ce iving la rge numbe rs of a la rms and s ta tus change notifica tions

The need for “eyes and ears” at all locations means potentially thousands of environmental and device sensors are reporting status and alarm notifications. The alarm “storms” can overwhelm users and result in missed critical notifications and wasted effort.

Ma inta ining a la rge fle e t of d is pe rs ed equipme nt a nd s oftwa re

The distributed, “lights out” nature of the smaller sites makes cost-effective maintenance a challenge as it is likely not practical to have trained staff at every site with replacement parts.

Evolution of CIO focus in their tra- ditional role of IT service delivery

Table 1 Common management challenges that result from complex hybrid IT environments that include multiple local edge sites

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How Modern DCIM Addresses CIO Management Challenges within Distributed, Hybrid IT Environments

“Bounda ryle s s da ta ce n te rs ” d rive s ne e d fo r re s ilie ncy e ve ry- whe re “The traditional four walls and a ceiling no longer contain the datacenter. The logi- cal datacenter construct now extends to cloud providers, colocation facilities, edge devices, and edge computing. Today’s datacenter exists without clear boundaries, creating growing complexity. The new hybrid computing environment is now much harder to operate as performance, reliability, compliance, and security are all more difficult to manage4.” As stated by the quote shown above from CIO.com, as traditional data center boundaries break down, IT operations are occurring everywhere now essentially. And this means that IT infrastructure, wherever it is located, needs to be treated more as a traditional data center power and cooling infrastructure would be treated, i.e., as mission critical. As more and more IT service delivery is driven remotely from the edge, the reliability and uptime of those distributed assets becomes more critical to the business. This is not to say, of course, that all IT infrastructure, appli- cations, and workloads have the same level of criticality. But, in general, IT installa- tions found outside the traditional “brick n’ mortar” data centers are just as critical today and, therefore, require improved infrastructure and management practices. As explained in Schneider Electric white paper 256, “Why Cloud Computing is Re- quiring Us to Rethink Resiliency at the Edge”, small, remote on-premise IT installa- tions have commonly been seen lacking security and redundancy, with unorganized IT enclosures or racks, and typically run without dedicated cooling or DCIM moni- toring. Since any one of these conditions presents a threat to availability, CIOs must address these conditions where they exist. A best practice for mitigating these risks is to deploy IT at the edge using micro data centers. These all-in-one enclosures securely contain servers, networking, and storage along with an uninterruptable power supply (UPS), rack power distribution, cooling, environmental monitoring, and DCIM monitoring. How DCIM itself helps ensure IT resiliency is explained in the next section. Dis tribu te d IT ma ke s s e curity a top conce rn Obviously, if critical IT assets are widely deployed outside the confines of tightly controlled and staffed data centers, security is going to be a serious concern. A 2020 IDC survey5 confirms that it is a top concern for CIOs (Figure 3). This worry spans both physical and cyber security. The Allianz Risk Barometer report pub- lished in 2022 ranked “cyber incidents” as the top business risk for enterprises to- day with “business interruption” ranked closely behind in second place.

4 CIO.com, Don’t be left behind. Dramatic change is impacting datacenters and people 5 Source: IDC White Paper, Succeeding at Connected Operations with Edge Computing

https://www.se.com/ww/en/download/document/SPD_VAVR-8T7KVJ_EN/ https://www.se.com/us/en/download/document/SPD_VAVR-AF3NSM_EN https://www.se.com/us/en/download/document/SPD_VAVR-AF3NSM_EN https://www.apc.com/us/en/solutions/business-solutions/micro-data-centers/overview.jsp https://www.agcs.allianz.com/news-and-insights/reports/allianz-risk-barometer.html https://www.cio.com/article/220577/don-t-be-left-behind-dramatic-change-is-impacting-datacenters-and-people.html https://www.se.com/ww/en/download/document/SE_IDC_WP_Edge/

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How Modern DCIM Addresses CIO Management Challenges within Distributed, Hybrid IT Environments

Compared to highly controlled purpose-built data centers, remote unstaffed IT in- stallations are naturally going to be more vulnerable to having unauthorized people access the installation either intentionally or unintentionally (e.g., cleaning crew plugging vacuum in to a rack plug strip) that leads to business interruptions. So, finding and implementing a secure location for every installation is a challenge. Also because of hybrid IT, protecting against cybersecurity threats becomes a greater challenge. Larger numbers of network connections that result from decen- tralized IT installations provide cyber criminals with larger numbers of attack vec- tors to exploit. The more outside network connections there are, the more security monitoring that must be done, and the greater the likelihood of a human error oc- curring that exposes a system vulnerability. Security software tools, including DCIM, are required to remotely monitor and automate security best practices as much as possible. CIOs inc re a s ing ly a s ke d to tra ck e nvironme n ta l impa c t o f IT While CIOs and their operations teams are struggling to maintain resiliency and se- curity of their expanding universe of IT, there is growing pressure to track, measure, report, and reduce the environmental impact of their enterprise IT operations. This pressure is coming from governments, investors, customers, and internally, per- haps, out of a sense of having a shared responsibility to address climate change. Schneider Electric white paper 64, Why Data Centers Must Prioritize Environmental Sustainability: Four Key Drivers, explains in detail why CIOs will have to focus much more on this in the future. However, CIOs are struggling today to answer even the fundamental sustainability questions such as, how much energy does my IT consume and what is the carbon footprint? What can the IT department do alone to reduce emissions? For IT out- sourced to the cloud or located in colocation providers, the onus can, to some de- gree, be put on the vendor to provide data for the relevant metrics. For on-premise IT, however, the CIO will be tasked with collecting the disparate data. While per- haps for some enterprises, this portion might be very small and seemingly inconse- quential, for many, CIO owned on-premise IT assets represents a much larger

Figure 3 A 2020 IDC survey shows that security of edge IT installations is a top concern for CIOs and IT operations teams.

https://www.se.com/ww/en/download/document/SPD_WP64_EN/ https://www.se.com/ww/en/download/document/SPD_WP64_EN/

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How Modern DCIM Addresses CIO Management Challenges within Distributed, Hybrid IT Environments

portion of their overall portfolio. A Schneider Electric analysis6 (Figure 4) shows how the share of energy consumed by IT will shift over time illustrating clearly that dis- tributed IT is going to be a bigger sustainability challenge than traditional core data centers (which includes centralized large cloud and colocation data center energy).

0

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

2,500

3,000

2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 2027 2028 2029 2030 2031 2032 2033 2034 2035 2036 2037 2038 2039 2040

TW h

Year

Data center Edge

Cumulative global core & distributed IT data center energy (TWh)

Core Data Center Distributed IT Data Center

Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software tools communicate with power, cooling, environmental monitoring devices, as well as with other facility and IT management software. DCIM has been fundamentally used to maximize the effi- cient use of power, cooling, and space resources. Well-implemented, DCIM im- proves the availability and resiliency of physical infrastructure systems and the IT workloads they support. Most DCIM suites offer 2 core functions: • Monitoring & device management – awareness of device/environmental

health and security status changes, trends, and alarms • Planning & modeling – simulating adds, moves, changes; risk analysis, ca-

pacity optimization Both functions work to improve and sustain resiliency of the IT. How monito ring & de vice ma na ge me n t improve s re s ilie ncy Operation of IT equipment – either in a core data center or a remote edge IT site - depends on stable electrical power, sufficient ventilation (or active cooling), as well as a secure location that is safe from unauthorized access or exposure to other physical and environmental threats. These dependencies mean that a highly resili- ent IT installation requires monitoring and management of the infrastructure equip- ment with DCIM software tools. This is particularly so for remote, unstaffed sites. You cannot effectively manage something that cannot be seen, after all. Waiting too long to discover there’s a problem with the supporting power and cooling infrastruc- ture will lead to business interruption. DCIM software provides that remote visibil- ity and early warning in conjunction with device and environmental sensors and cameras. These are summarized in Table 2 below. White Paper 280, Practical Guide to Ensuring Availability at Edge Computing Sites, goes beyond the DCIM system and describes specific actions to take to improve availability of the power and cooling systems that support small, remote IT installations.

6 Source: Core & Distributed IT Data Center Global Energy Forecast TradeOff Tool

How DCIM makes hybrid IT more resilient

Figure 4 Schneider Electric TradeOff Tool 28, Data Center and Edge Global Energy Forecast, shows what the share of energy consumed by IT could be between core data cen- ters and edge computing sites over time.

http://www.apc.com/wp?wp=280 http://www.apc.com/wp?wp=280 https://www.se.com/ww/en/work/solutions/system/s1/data-center-and-network-systems/trade-off-tools/data-center-and-edge-global-energy-forecast/ https://www.se.com/ww/en/work/solutions/system/s1/data-center-and-network-systems/trade-off-tools/data-center-and-edge-global-energy-forecast/ https://www.se.com/ww/en/work/solutions/system/s1/data-center-and-network-systems/trade-off-tools/data-center-and-edge-global-energy-forecast/ https://www.se.com/ww/en/work/solutions/system/s1/data-center-and-network-systems/trade-off-tools/data-center-and-edge-global-energy-forecast/ https://www.se.com/ww/en/work/solutions/system/s1/data-center-and-network-systems/trade-off-tools/data-center-and-edge-global-energy-forecast/ https://www.se.com/ww/en/work/solutions/system/s1/data-center-and-network-systems/trade-off-tools/data-center-and-edge-global-energy-forecast/

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How Modern DCIM Addresses CIO Management Challenges within Distributed, Hybrid IT Environments

Particularly with highly distributed IT portfolios, resiliency depends first on using DCIM to monitor critical power and cooling systems and the environmental monitor- ing sensors that support the IT. Next, we show how DCIM planning and modeling functions improve resiliency to sustain business operations. How p la nn ing & mode ling improve s re s ilie ncy Hybrid IT environments make for a challenging operations environment given their criticality to business operations. Careful coordination and planning are required between facilities and IT when it comes to adds, moves, and changes. The potential impact on system availability can be so severe that each operational task must be carefully evaluated in terms of its net effect on availability. DCIM planning and mod- eling modules provide the means to do this careful evaluation. This function begins with creating and maintaining an accurate map of all infrastruc- ture assets and IT equipment along with their interdependencies with each other. Once setup, the software will map a given virtual machine (VM) to a specific: • Physical host server and network port • U space • IT rack • Power path(s) (i.e., path A and/or B showing Rack PDU, UPS, PDU, switch-

gear) • Cooling units

Function Description Resiliency impact

De vice & e nvironmenta l monitoring

Provides a “read only” connection to all critical infrastructure devices (e.g., UPS, rack PDU, cooling, etc.) – regardless of vendor – to moni- tor status, access & alarms in real time.

Awareness of status changes, trends, and alarms prevents issues from becoming critical incidents that could lead to IT service interruptions. Monitor- ing for unauthorized access to equipment reduce physical security risks.

De vice management

Provides a means by which infrastructure de- vices can be configured (e.g., alarm thresh- olds, communication settings) and their firm- ware updated.

Configuration & updates ensures equipment per- forms as expected and helps secure the overall system from cyber security threats.

As s e t tra cking Provides a holistic view of all assets, including their location, name, status, etc.

IT resiliency requires having an asset inventory and understanding their attributes and resource dependencies, particularly when conducting maintenance activities.

Da ta a na lytics & vis ua liza tion

Presents useful and actionable information on device status, alarms, and the health of the in- frastructure systems and their environment through simple dashboards and reports.

Raw device data, frequent status change notifica- tions, and “alarm storms” can overwhelm users; analytics and clear visualization of data makes DCIM use simpler and more effective to ensure critical alerts do NOT go unnoticed. Predict battery failures ahead of time to avoid unplanned outages.

3rd pa rty p la tform in te gra tion

Allows DCIM data to be shared with a remote monitoring and management (RMM) tool or building management system (BMS) using ap- plication programming interfaces (APIs) or an SNMP management information base (MIB).

Managed service providers (MSPs) commonly manage edge computing IT and use their own management platforms; sharing DCIM data with these tools solves “lack of staff” challenge by ena- bling trusted partners to manage it for you. En- sures visibility even when you do not have the staff to do it.

Table 2 Resiliency benefits of DCIM monitoring and device management functions

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How Modern DCIM Addresses CIO Management Challenges within Distributed, Hybrid IT Environments

In 2D and 3D views, DCIM planning & modeling modules will show real-time capac- ities of all resources (e.g., power, cooling, rack space, network switches, and ca- bling). Policies can be set down to the workload level to ensure workloads receive the required level of criticality (e.g., the VM can only reside on a host with 2N power redundancy or a UPS with xx minutes of runtime). By creating, in effect, a “digital twin” (in both 2D and 3D, typically) of your portfolio of data centers and edge IT sites, this DCIM function simulates adds, moves, and changes so that operators understand the potential impacts before real action is taken. By first performing actions virtually, the risk of an unplanned interruption in IT service, as maintenance is performed, is minimized. Particularly when there’s no on- site IT staff, having this digital visualization of all assets and their interdependencies is important. Note, with all assets fully documented (type, serial number, rack loca- tion, network port, power path, etc.) and mapped to each other, this information could also serve as a basis for a disaster recovery (DR) plan. Imagine needing to “swap and replace” all your remotely located UPSs. With DCIM planning and modeling functionality, you would understand – without being on site - which physical servers, virtual workloads, and applications were dependent on each of the UPSs. Turning the UPS off and switching to a redundant power path could be simulated to understand what the impact would be on connected work- loads and applications. Affected critical workloads could be identified and safely migrated to another server or site before the UPS replacement takes place. This in- formation and the ability to run simulations makes it easier to plan and execute the actual transition while reducing the chances of an unexpected outage. The following bullets summarize some example ways that DCIM planning and mod- eling functions can improve resiliency of the IT: • Prevent VMs or physical servers from being moved or added to locations with

insufficient power and cooling capacities that could otherwise result in system downtime.

• Be alerted to an unexpected change in power capacity to avoid a sudden out- age when the circuit becomes overloaded and trips a breaker.

• Reduce risk of human error during maintenance activities through fault simula- tions.

• Integrate with virtual machine management software to initiate VM migration once the UPS reaches a low battery state or fault condition to avoid an unin- tended loss of service.

• Use work order management tools to better ensure critical maintenance is properly scheduled, assigned, defined, and carried through before a failure occurs.

• Simulate a replacement of a UPS to understand what workloads would be af- fected during the changeover so that they can be moved proactively to a loca- tion that meets its requirements.

As mentioned previously, widely distributed, hybrid IT means an increase in the number of networked devices and in overall network connections to the outside world. This increase provides more opportunity for cybercriminals to attempt to breach security measures to access the IT and/or the physical infrastructure sys- tems that support them. In recent years, according to the CyberEdge Group’s re- cent Cyberthreat Defense Report, there has been a 40% increase (over 7 years) in companies that have been compromised by a cyber-attack, going from 61.9% to

How DCIM improves security

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How Modern DCIM Addresses CIO Management Challenges within Distributed, Hybrid IT Environments

86.2% of surveyed enterprise companies7. Choosing cybersecurity-conscious ven- dors, implementing, and maintaining the right technologies and network architec- ture, along with constant vigilance by the operations team is an imperative today. White Paper 216, Cybersecurity Guidance for Data Center Power and Cooling Infra- structure Systems provides an in-depth framework for preventing the supporting in- frastructure managed by DCIM software from becoming a successful target for cyber-attacks. It is often said that cybersecurity begins with physical security. Particularly for re- mote, unstaffed edge computing sites, maintaining physical security can also be a challenge without having the right software tools. Given the criticality of the IT, it is imperative for operations teams to secure and control access to the IT enclosures, if not also to the rooms that they are housed in and have remote visibility to the loca- tions where the IT is housed through security cameras. DCIM software has not traditionally been the tool to turn to for either cyber or physi- cal security functionality. With the development of hybrid IT and edge computing, however, modern, and effective DCIM solutions evolved to incorporate these capa- bilities. The next two sub-sections explain what those capabilities are. How DCIM re duce s cybe rs e curity ris ks Devices monitored by DCIM – ie, Rack PDUs, UPSs, cooling units, and environmen- tal monitoring appliances, etc. - all have built-in network management cards that enable the device to communicate on the network. All of these devices, as well as the DCIM server and gateway must always be kept up to date with the latest firm- ware or software patches. Note that a network-connected infrastructure device con- tains both device firmware and network management card firmware and/or soft- ware. It is important that both are kept up to date. Cyber criminals are constantly working to find vulnerabilities in existing code in order to hijack devices to steal data, control devices, cause outages, etc. New firmware and software patches not only fix bugs and provide additional performance enhancements, but they often ad- dress known security vulnerabilities. These code updates should be installed or ap- plied as soon as they become available from the vendor. This requires on-going discipline from the operations team. The security features and settings that were enabled and configured during the ini- tial setup and installation, also need to be maintained throughout the life of the infra- structure device, network appliance, or management server/gateway. By minimizing the number of users with the ability to change these settings, you reduce the chances of unintended or non-permitted changes being made. Beyond that, these settings should be checked regularly to ensure they remain set properly over time. DCIM tools with a security assessment feature as shown in Figure 5 can simplify all of this work described above significantly, at least, for power and cooling infrastruc- ture devices. These assessments will scan all connected devices across the entire IT portfolio to provide a report highlighting out of date firmware and compromised security settings. Some DCIM tools will also automate the updating of firmware and provide a means to perform mass configurations of security settings across multiple devices at once to greatly simplify the process.

7 https://cyber-edge.com/cdr/

https://www.se.com/ww/en/download/document/SPD_WP216_EN/ https://www.se.com/ww/en/download/document/SPD_WP216_EN/ https://cyber-edge.com/cdr/

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How Modern DCIM Addresses CIO Management Challenges within Distributed, Hybrid IT Environments

How DCIM re duce s phys ica l s e curity ris ks Data center environmental monitoring appliances can be used to not just detect/track temperature, humidity, fluid leaks, smoke, and vibration, but they also typically inte- grate with security cameras, door sensors, and access cards. Monitored and controlled through DCIM software, these appliances help remote operations teams monitor and track human activity around critical IT as well as environmental conditions that could equally threaten the resiliency of business operations. Figure 6 shows an example en- vironmental monitoring appliance and camera system interface as part of an overall DCIM implementation.

Figure 5 This screenshot shows an ex- ample of a DCIM security as- sessment feature from Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure Data Center IT Expert software tool. The fea- ture assesses which devices are not meeting security standards in terms of firmware being up to date and whether there any vulnerable configu- rations.

Figure 6 This is a screenshot of a Schneider Electric NetBotz 750, an example environmental monitoring appliance and cam- era system, to show how de- vices like this can be used to monitor and track unmanned distributed sites.

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How Modern DCIM Addresses CIO Management Challenges within Distributed, Hybrid IT Environments

Throughout much of the 2010s, the data center industry was very focused on en- ergy efficiency centered around the power usage effectiveness (PUE) metric. Most traditional DCIM solutions offer the ability to report PUE. Although widely adopted, PUE is fundamentally only an energy efficiency measurement of the supporting power and cooling infrastructure for the IT. It does not address greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, total energy consumed, or anything to do with circularity or land use. A similar metric was developed for water use, called WUE, that has had more limited traction in the industry. Now that there has been a global shift in awareness and focus on addressing cli- mate change more broadly and with a sense of urgency, the data center and IT in- dustry is responding by making its products more sustainable. This means less em- bodied carbon, higher energy efficiency, and greater circularity and recyclability of its products and solutions. For enterprise CIOs who are under growing pressure to track and show progress on corporate sustainability goals, this also means that in- dustry vendors should be providing the product information and data CIOs need for tracking and reporting sustainability metrics. Schneider Electric white paper 67, Guide to Environmental Sustainability Metrics for Data Centers, defines a range of metrics for data center and distributed IT owners to strive to measure depending on whether you consider yourself to be “a beginner”, “advanced”, or a “leading” or- ganization in terms of operational maturity. Referred to as Environmental Sustainability Management (ESM) software, enter- prise-level platforms exist for collecting data and reporting virtually all environmen- tal sustainability metrics across an enterprise including energy, GHG (including Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions), water, waste, and land & biodiversity metrics. These systems rely on data collected from meters, sensors, invoices, and via APIs, from other management software tools, such as DCIM. ESM software then aggregates, normalizes, and presents the data and metrics for reporting and goal-tracking pur- poses. Effective solutions ensure accurate, auditable, and transparent non-financial reporting of environmental sustainability data and metrics at an overall, global en- terprise level. Me trics a nd re porting But for CIOs who are trying to get a grasp of the basics for their domain of on prem- ises data centers, colocation assets, and edge computing sites, modern DCIM soft- ware tools can help. Some DCIM (“out of the box”) offers today will collect data and report for individual sites and in aggregate: • PUE: current and historical • Energy consumption: usage at sub-system level to show in both real-time and

historical trends of total consumption, IT consumption, and power losses • Carbon footprint (scope 2 emissions) based on local carbon emissions factors

in total and by subsystem including IT, power, and cooling. For these metrics to be meaningful, of course, it is important for the DCIM software to be able to communicate with and normalize data from all power and cooling in- frastructure devices, regardless of make or model. This ensures a complete picture of environmental impact. So DCIM tools and infrastructure devices that embrace common, open protocols (e.g., SNMPv3) and that accommodate the use of APIs/web services should be used.

How DCIM helps achieve sustainability goals

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_usage_effectiveness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_usage_effectiveness https://go.schneider-electric.com/WW_202111_WP67-Sustainability-Metrics-EN_MF-LP.html?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=cloudcolo https://www.se.com/us/en/download/document/SPD_WP54_EN/

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How Modern DCIM Addresses CIO Management Challenges within Distributed, Hybrid IT Environments

For CIOs required to track their Scope 3 emissions of the enterprise IT, which is largely the embodied carbon in the IT and supporting infrastructure, DCIM can also help. The first step is to take inventory of what is installed at all sites. DCIM’s asset management functionality can be used to map out all devices in data centers or edge IT installations including the IT, networking, storage, power distribution and cooling infrastructure. Embodied carbon data obtained from device manufacturers can be stored as attributes of the devices in the DCIM asset management tool. DCIM can be used to track equipment age to differentiate between new equipment and existing to assist with Scope 3 emissions accounting, as well. Note, some DCIM tools can integrate with IT discovery and inventory software tools (IT asset management, or ITAM) and configuration management database (CMDB) systems which potentially could be used in a similar way to track embodied carbon of all physical assets, including those devices monitored by DCIM. At the time of this writing, DCIM is in the early phase of its evolution towards be- coming an environmental sustainability reporting management tool for data center white space and edge computing, in addition to being a tool for improving resili- ency and security. We can foresee DCIM providing the means to collect and report on more of the metrics that are summarized in Table 2 of Schneider Electric White Paper 67 referenced above. Embodied carbon data of the infrastructure hardware that is documented in an environmental declaration form or product environmental profile (PEP) file could be autoloaded into the DCIM software as new devices are added to the network so that their scope 3 emissions can be properly accounted for more easily. Data related to product end-of-life such as recyclability could also be stored and presented by DCIM software in the future to help with improving circu- larity. While standard offers are limited today, some vendors offer engineering services to customize the output of a DCIM system and/or integrate the DCIM software with other data sources (e.g., emissions factor libraries) or platforms (e.g., ESM, ITAM, CMDB software) to address environmental sustainability reporting needs. Figures 7 and 8 show examples of custom dashboards made to show energy consumption, cost, carbon emissions, PUE, power losses and capacity utilization. And for those enterprises who are using an ESM platform, energy data from your on-premise data centers and edge computing IT sites can be sent from your DCIM software to the ESM tool via an API to provide enterprise sustainability teams with a consolidated view of the impact of your on-premise IT portfolio, for example.

Figure 7 This screenshot shows an ex- ample custom dashboard from Schneider Electric’s IT Advisor planning and modeling soft- ware that shows energy con- sumption, cost, and carbon emissions for various infrastruc- ture systems of a data center.

https://go.schneider-electric.com/WW_202111_WP67-Sustainability-Metrics-EN_MF-LP.html?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=cloudcolo https://go.schneider-electric.com/WW_202111_WP67-Sustainability-Metrics-EN_MF-LP.html?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=cloudcolo

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How Modern DCIM Addresses CIO Management Challenges within Distributed, Hybrid IT Environments

Re duc ing e mis s ions The use of DCIM in your day-to-day operations can directly serve to reduce energy consumption and, thereby, lower your emissions today. The following bullets list some of the ways this can be done. Note, not all DCIM offers are capable of perform- ing these actions. • Design energy-efficient floor layouts for expansion/consolidation projects that

optimize airflows and ventilation pathways to minimize cooling energy. • Use built-in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis tools to reduce cool-

ing energy by testing increasing temperature set points, enabling economizer mode, and changing other cooling parameters.

• Take advantage of IT optimization tools in DCIM that monitors server utilization and power consumption at a rack and individual server level to help reduce overall IT energy consumption by avoiding overprovisioning and underutiliza- tion.

• Use built-in CRAC/CRAH AI-based optimization tools in DCIM to automatically regulate unit airflow speeds or turn off cooling units when cooling energy is overprovisioned.

• Use DCIM energy consumption data (via rack PDUs) as a department charge- back mechanism to drive more energy efficient behavior.

Put more simply, DCIM functions can be used to better match power consumption to the IT load by turning down or turning off idle infrastructure resources. Or by con- solidating the IT load to reduce both IT energy consumption as well as power losses from the supporting infrastructure.

Figure 8 This screenshot shows an example custom dashboard from Schneider Electric’s IT Advisor planning and mod- eling software that shows the current, real-time PUE, power losses by subsystem and capacity utilization.

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How Modern DCIM Addresses CIO Management Challenges within Distributed, Hybrid IT Environments

As the role of enterprise CIOs expands to driving business strategy, digitalization, and innovation, their traditional role of IT service delivery remains critical. However, this has become much more challenging as IT portfolios have become more distrib- uted geographically and spread between cloud, colocation, and the edge. IT resili- ency and security must be constantly monitored and maintained across their entire portfolio of IT assets. At the same time, there’s growing urgency and pressure to track, report on, and improve environmental sustainability. The distributed nature of Hybrid IT portfolios today makes all this challenging to do. Modern DCIM software tools designed for distributed IT environments help address these management challenges. This paper has described in detail how DCIM monitoring & alarming as well as planning & modeling functions serve to make Hybrid IT more resilient, se- cure, and sustainable.

About the author Patrick Donovan is a Senior Research Analyst for the Energy Management Research Center at

Schneider Electric. He has over 27 years of experience developing and supporting critical power and cooling systems for Schneider Electric’s Secure Power Business unit including several award- winning power protection, efficiency, and availability solutions. An author of numerous white pa- pers, industry articles, and technology assessments, Patrick's research on data center physical infrastructure technologies and markets offers guidance and advice on best practices for plan- ning, designing, and operation of data center facilities.

Conclusion

Schneider Electric – Energy Management Research Center White Paper 281 Ver 3 16

How Modern DCIM Addresses CIO Management Challenges within Distributed, Hybrid IT Environments

The Drivers and Benefits of Edge Computing White Paper 226

Why Cloud Computing is Requiring Us to Rethink Resiliency at the Edge White Paper 256

Why Data Centers Must Prioritize Environmental Sustainability: Four Key Drivers White Paper 64

Practical Guide to Ensuring Availability at Edge Computing Sites White Paper 280

Cybersecurity Guidance for Data Center Power and Cooling Infrastructure Systems White Paper 216

Guide to Environmental Sustainability Metrics for Data Centers White Paper 67

Note: Internet links can become obsolete over time. The referenced links were available at the time this paper was written but may no longer be available now.

Contact us For feedback and comments about the content of this white paper:

Schneider Electric Energy Management Research Center dcsc@schneider-electric.com

If you are a customer and have questions specific to your data center project:

Contact your Schneider Electric representative at www.apc.com/support/contact/index.cfm

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