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Managing the Physical Infrastructure
Monday, August 9th, 2010How do you effectively manage a task, an object, a person, a service, an entity? Whatever it is to be managed, can it be managed without understanding it first? Although the answer can be yes, it shouldn’t be, we all know how well things turn out when it is… So, if to effectively manage we must first understand, the question then becomes how do we gain understanding? Understanding is learning, and learning is the effective transfer of information and concepts. So how do we learn?
We are visual creatures. The proof is in our history, in our scientific studies and in our everyday behavior. From drawing on cave walls to record the past, to maps and charts for navigation as we explored our world, visualizations predate the spoken or written word. When two cultures meet and language is not shared, how are messages conveyed? With drawings and hand gestures – both means of visualizing concepts and thoughts. A picture is worth a thousand words, and its value is context. Words, however descriptive, lack context. Without context all you can go on are assumptions.
If we agree that we learn by seeing, then how do we effectively apply the “reason of visualizing”, to the management of the modern day datacenter? It’s often impractical to walk the data center floor to secure a first-hand view… and even if it were practical, the stroll gets a bit long in multi-sited, or Co-Located implementations.
Well… we can always leverage 2D floor plans, and in some cases, front elevations of cabinets to gain insight. But, once again, we’re compromising context, and making assumptions. “2D is old!” was the comment made by my eight year old when he saw the original Super Mario for the first time. Eight years old… and he “gets” that poor old Mario lacked realism and precision. If my eight year old feels cheated when he’s subjected to anything less than “real 3D”, why would we shackle ourselves to impaired vision, compromised context, and with it, false understanding when managing a multi-million dollar capital investment as complex as a datacenter?
Consider a few of the risks of anything less than “Better than Life” understanding…
- The inter-dependencies between an asset, and every asset that supports that device, whether power or network cabling – goes missing. Are your connectivity concerns limited to the assets that reside in the same cabinet, and the first hop in the circuit?
- Rail Positions – Where are the rails? Are they front and rear? What’s the offset from the front and rear?
- Free U positions are only “free” in the proper context. Which orientation – front or rear? Depth of existing devices? Depth of the new device? Distance between rails?
- Ever lose a few hours managing around the obstructions within the Cabinet – cable management, side mounted power strips?
- Distance is a crucial metric. IT Services often degrade over distance. Cabling costs strain budgets – would be nice to know if that last vendor quote accurately reflected the run in the data center – wouldn’t it?
- You just got a work order to do a major server refresh – have fun managing the swap-outs absent understanding of the “Future View” impacts.
Now some will argue that 3D representation of a data center and associated facilities is little more than a “pretty picture”… and, rather than debating that point by rehashing the start of this blog, I’ll agree. But… take that “pretty picture” and embed within the visual the asset-based operational and business metrics on which IT agility is dependent… Then, on a single click, retrieve the continuous-time performance disposition of that asset and all related interdependencies…
What you have is no “pretty picture” – what you have is the future of managing the Physical Infrastructure.
iTRACS Announces UK Office Relocation
Monday, February 22nd, 2010For Immediate Release
iTRACS Announces UK Office Relocation
Oak Brook, IL, February 22, 2010 – iTRACS Corporation, the leader in Converged Physical Infrastructure Management™, has announced the completion of its UK office relocation to Innovation Centre Medway in Kent.
The relocation by iTRACS Corporation from Bedfordshire to Kent will allow iTRACS to provide improved services to its customers and partners, including larger conferencing facilities and more direct access to London.
iTRACS UK’s new sales office is located at: Innovation Centre Medway Maidstone Road Chatham, Kent
ME5 9FD England Telephone: +44 (0) 1634 887283 Fax: +44 (0) 1634 887284
About iTRACS Corporation
Since our inception and the delivery of our first solution, CRIMP (released in 1987), through our current solution portfolio, iTRACS for Converged Physical Infrastructure Management™, iTRACS has been singularly focused on improving the agility of the Enterprise IT physical infrastructure. Today, iTRACS solutions can be found in industry-leading organizations throughout the globe, managing facilities and high-demand data centers.
iTRACS is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, with development offices in Tempe, Arizona. The company has sales offices in the United States, UAE, United Kingdom, and Singapore, and distribution partners throughout the U.K., Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia and Australia
Contact: James Sherrin +01 480 557 8000 jsherrin@itracs.com
