Benefits of Data Center Automation Strategies

Today, data centers are facing new challenges due to complex business applications and stringent IT budgets. Many enterprises face labor climates that prevent the increase of workforce to handle data center operations. In other words, a data center admin or manager will find it difficult to employ his resources effectively. The solution? Automation.

Most forward thinking companies are looking to leverage the benefits of data center automation (DCA) to improve their operational efficiency as well as reduce the workload on their managers and data center staff. The two most important features that enterprises should look for in a DCA solution are centralized management capabilities and support for heterogeneous systems. Data center infrastructure is bound to change with future additions in terms of hardware as well as software components. A good DCA strategy would need to consider such aspects and be well prepared to handle changing environments without compromising on operational efficiency.

DCA strategies should therefore not only be concerned about making things easy for the managers today, but also to plug gaps that may arise due to automation of tasks that were to date non automated.

Automation greatly reduces the downtime of failures when automatic failure recovery and backup mechanisms are implemented, ensuring continuous business availability. DCA also allows for planning of impact metrics so the cost of future changes to hardware or software can be estimated.

Above all, data center automation strategies help to increase operator productivity while reducing the stress on IT managers and executives.

Alex Carroll

Managing Member at Lifeline Data Centers

Alex, co-owner, is responsible for all real estate, construction and mission critical facilities: hardened buildings, power systems, cooling systems, fire suppression, and environmentals. Alex also manages relationships with the telecommunications providers and has an extensive background in IT infrastructure support, database administration and software design and development. Alex architected Lifeline’s proprietary GRCA system and is hands-on every day in the data center.