Johannesburg, 14 Aug 2013
Falcon Electronics, together with Trackit, brings South African clients a solution that provides data centre (DC) managers accuracy of information of all assets in the DC. The product offers complete confidence to DC managers in and around current capacity and future planning.
At the forefront of providing a truly integrated suite of asset management, asset tracking and intelligent power management capabilities, this technology integration improves the speed at which information is available and increases the visibility of all assets.
Trackit will enhance performance and offer business benefits that provide tangible return on investment, and a reduced total cost of ownership.
Case study
Trackit case study: major leading telecoms company data centre asset management (DCAM) analysis
A leading telecoms company engaged with Trackit Solutions to help quickly analyse and produce a written report, giving accurate details of quantity of racks, floor-mounted devices, rack-mounted devices and also specifying between active and passive devices (powered/non-powered devices).
The reason for the pre-audit report was to help understand the scale of a newly acquired estate of data centres for the data centre operations team to manage.
The first stage of the project was to give a high level overview based on facility, location, confirmed quantity of racks and rack-mounted devices, firstly to quantify the size and scale of the estate, but also to confirm numbers that would need to be audited and asset managed using the Trackit Solution, in order to give both rack elevations and top-down views of the data centre for ongoing BAU of the data centre asset management.
The project was for 12 500 devices, with the initial pre-audit report stage taking two weeks, including a workshop on site to understand the full requirements and time to write up a full report on the findings. Following the initial pre-audit survey, a full audit survey was conducted giving exact details of racks, rack-mounted devices and device-mounted devices, detailing: manufacturer, model, series, asset number, serial number, service tag details, host name (where applicable) and full positional details, building, floor, space, rack location on floor, "u" position in rack and if front or rear of rack-mounted.
All of these details then gave enough information to build up an accurate picture of floor view (from a top-down perspective) and also rack elevation. The data audited and supplied was powerful as this gave fast, accurate information of exactly what was contained within all the environments, so the client can make accurate, informed decisions knowing they have up-to-date data to base these decisions on. The whole estate was pre-audited, audited and populated into the Trackit DCAM solution, all within four weeks, from start to finish.
Devices audited within the racks are depicted exactly as devices are mounted and shown in the physical racks on the floor.
Elevations show front and rear of racks. Once data is audited, this then allows manipulation and reporting on this data very quickly and easily to give accurate analysis and reporting.
"...for the first time, we have had the complete picture and the knowledge to confidently make the right decisions about what we do and where we do it. Changes can now be easily reported against with known and predictable outcomes." - Data Centre Operations Manager
Benefits summary
Clarity and understanding - initial thought was that there were only 3 000 devices within the estate. The pre-audit uncovered that there are 12 500 (over 400% more). This highlighted a huge variance in known infrastructure, which significantly affected the accuracy of existing decision-making.
* The next step was to conduct a workshop to understand important fields of data to be collected during phase two (full audit) and standards for intelligent tagging of data centre equipment.
Demonstrable, accurate decisions - the data from this project has enabled the client to fully understand the true capacity and footprint of the estate, providing the client with the ability to make informed decisions regarding consolidation and space reallocation to reduce costs and maximise efficiency, as it now has true visibility of what it has and where it is.
* Utilising the Trackit Enterprise Solution, the client is now able to maintain its data effectively and use Trackit reporting and dashboards to efficiently plan consolidation activity.
* Moving forwards, a quarterly validation audit is planned to validate accuracy and the business' adoption of the new system.
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