3 Important Data Center Productivity Metrics

A data center is meant to serve your business’ data needs, and some of the most important aspects of data centers are uptime, preparedness for disaster recovery and customer satisfaction. The data center may be equipped with the most hi-tech superior performing systems, but, for some, it also needs to have that extra something when it comes to execution and delivery.

Here are some important metrics that help in monitoring and tracking data center productivity.

1. Database Administration

As much as 20% of every organization’s IT budget is being spent on database administration. Many times, there are multiple vendors and different applications recommended for different databases, leading to a cluttered and costly database environment. Measuring the number of database instances per administrator provides you with a good way to keep database administration complexity and costs balanced.

2. Latency

This is time delay between the arrival of a customer request and its successful closure. A highly responsive data center staff that is well managed can perform at optimal levels to bring down latency considerably, leading to increased customer satisfaction.

3. Capacity

This is measured as the ability of a data center to handle additional workloads. A data center operating at full capacity is at risk of facing losses due to unforeseen events. At the same time, many businesses experience spurts in demand that they suddenly pass onto the data center. Managing capacity so as to handle best and worst case scenarios is an important aspect of data center operations.

Predicting a data center’s energy consumption is a good technique for managing capacity issues. Monitoring capacity gives administrators historical scenarios of where there have been bottlenecks in the past so that these can be eliminated in the future. Availability of budgets and information on future work helps in planning and allocating resources in the datacenter. The optimal set up is to have everything available “just in time” so that components arrive only when they are actually needed.

Metrics help management measure against success parameters and effectively forecast for the future. To learn how a professionally managed data center can help your business gain performance, get in touch with us today.

Rich Banta

Managing Member at Lifeline Data Centers

Rich is responsible for Compliance and Certifications, Data Center Operations, Information Technology, and Client Concierge Services. Rich has an extensive background in server and network management, large scale wide-area networks, storage, business continuity, and monitoring. Rich is a former CTO of a major health care system. Rich is hands-on every day in the data centers. He also holds many certifications, including: CISA – Certified Information Systems Auditor CRISC – Certified in Risk & Information Systems Management CDCE – Certified Data Center Expert CDCDP – Certified Data Center Design Professional