Is Single Pane of Glass Overemphasized by the Data Center Infrastructure Management Industry?

I believe many seeking the "Holy Grail" of Data Center Management, a Single Pane of Glass to manage and monitor their Data Center and IT infrastructure are about as successful as the archeologists seeking the divine cup. I've seen many enterprise Data Centers come to the conclusion that they aren't ready for a Single Pane of Glass tool after sending out RFI's seeking such a tool. Is it realistic to think that an enterprise Data Center can get everything it needs to effectively monitor, manage and optimize on a Single Pane of Glass? Does this single pane then become such a crowded screen that the alerts and alarms become lost? Can a single pane be used to monitor, manage and optimize all of the assets and systems that are critical to the success of our Data Center's performance and availability?

Can a Single Pane of Glass Realistically
Manage your Data Center Infrastructure?

Where I think we first need to focus our attention in the evolution of Data Center monitoring and management is getting all data from systems that are discovering assets, monitoring system conditions and performance into a CMDB so all of our software tools can utilize this important data. IT, Facilities and executive management then are all using the same data to work as a team to address issues and optimize the Data Center and IT infrastructure's performance. Obtaining this data and verifying that this data is correct before it is entered into a CMDB is a huge challenge and few organizations have accomplished this feat. Many have failed in attempts to gather too much of this data manually. Organizations can typically expect a 10% error rate in manual data entry due to typing and transcribing errors. Can we afford to be making decisions about the capacity, performance and availability of our Data Centers with a 10% error rate? Before we can even think about Single Pane of Glass we have to implement a CMDB strategy that includes real-time data collection and accuracy validation.

I'd be interested in hearing where your organization is at the evolution of your Data Center & IT infrastructure management and whether you agree or disagree with my focal points for success.

PTS Exhibiting at 3rd Annual HITECH Symposium for Healthcare Related IT Solutions

PTS Data Center Solutions is exhibiting at the Third Annual Mid-Atlantic Crossing the Infrastructure & HITECH Meaningful Divide Symposium. 

The event is Entitled: “Patients, Care Givers, and Technology: Partners in Care" and will take place on March 21st and 22nd at the Radisson Valley Forge in Pennsylvania.

For those of you unfamiliar with HITECH, the HITECH Act was established with the primary goal of improving the population’s health and the quality and cost of healthcare. One particular focus area is in the ability to provide electronic medial records for patients to service providers anywhere in the world via proper, HIPAA-compliant, sharing of these records anywhere the patient may happen to be.

The symposium includes a series of seminars and presentations related to IT issues and problems experienced by IT professionals in the healthcare sector. In addition, there is an exhibit hall for vendors to present solutions targeting healthcare IT.

PTS has world class design, engineering, construction, and management staff across both facility and IT disciplines. This integrated data center facility and IT expertise affords PTS a unique vantage point for executing data center, computer room, and network operations center projects for both healtcare service providers and hospitals as well as many other market sectors. We can build, redesign, consolidate or relocate your computer room as well as provide many IT-related services and solutions:

• Routing & Switching
• Information / Network Security
• Servers & Systems
• Virtualization Technologies
• Data Protection & Storage
• Unified Communications
• Microsoft Exchange & Active Directory
• Application Development
• Software Development

Learn more about the HITECH Symposium or Register for the Event.