Raritan’s Latest DCIM Release Automates Change Management, Adds Capacity Map

In the latest release of its data center infrastructure management software Raritan has added a comprehensive single-pane-of-glass map of the data center’s capacity and a change-management workflow engine.

Capacity and change management are two of the most important features of DCIM. Both address efficiency: one from capacity utilization standpoint and the other from the operational-efficiency angle.

“DCIM solutions … help organizations do more with their data center resources by providing operations insight and automating key manual tasks so that work is done quickly and accurately,” IDC analyst Jennifer Koppy said in a statement.

Raritan’s new Data Center Map provides a comprehensive capacity overview, including space, power, cooling, network ports and power connections. It uses red, yellow and green indicators to show capacity and health of the resources.

There is also a new “inspector widget,” which compares capacity budgeted to capacity utilized in real time.

The Bidirectional Workflow Engine automates the process of moving or adding equipment. The feature integrates more tightly Raritan DCIM and ITMS (IT management services) by other companies, such as BMC and ServiceNow.

Integration with ITMS is a key feature for DCIM software. Most data center operators who buy DCIM want it to work in concert with ITSM software they use, according to Mark Harris, vice president of marketing and strategy for DCIM vendor Nlyte.

Other features added in the latest release of Raritan DCIM:

• Enhanced Analytics and New Automated Reports. Automatic generation and distribution of key data center reports, such as energy bill-back reports by customer, reports identifying ghost and power-hog servers and monthly peak power reports.
• Quick Move.  Select and quickly move assets to desired location with support from Intelligent Capacity Search feature that recommends asset placement locations based on how much space, power, cooling and connectivity is in a cabinet. All disconnect and reconnect change requests are automatically validated and issued. The DCIM system captures all requests and work orders in an audit log.
• Automatic Alert Notifications of Cabinet-Level Events. The release expands threshold violation alerts to the cabinet-monitoring layer.  It warns of cabinet threshold violations, such as capacity levels.