Shenzhen Digitalor Technology Co., Ltd

28/02/2018

Digitalor's SmarRack applied in Huawei's data center

10/02/2018

Asset Management In The Data Center

Asset management is a system and process that records and tracks all high value assets in an organization. The risk of not properly recording and tracking assets can be expensive. Cloud computing requires asset utilization rates to rise in order to keep costs low. At the same time, facility managers are under pressure to reduce cooling costs. This means that equipment longevity must be more carefully managed than ever before.

Start with an asset management database
The asset management database is where all equipment purchases are recorded. Each record holds the details of one asset and where it is currently held. For large assets such as computer racks, PDUs, and switches they cannot be broken into multiple usable pieces making them easily tracked. However, blade servers and storage arrays can be broken down and the individual components sold, replaced, or used for spares.

Asset tags. At its simplest, an asset tag is just a sticky label using special adhesive that makes it virtually impossible to remove without leaving some form of residue being left behind. Assets tags tend to be large and are not suited to every piece of equipment. To solve this, the current best of breed asset tags use radio chips, RFID, and InfraRed (IR) making it much easier to track assets as they move around the data center.

Innovation solves many problems. New technologies such as near field communication and RFID, already used in credit cards, passports, and medical devices provide a 21stcentury solution to asset tags. Adapting the technology for a new generation of asset management tags is relatively simple.
Another example of innovation by asset management vendors is using a socket strip down the side of the rack, which talks to a tag on the server. Pressing a button to release the server from the socket strip activates a sensor that records the asset has been moved. When a new device is installed, the sensor is triggered again, interrogates the asset tag, and records the new asset in the rack.

Data center infrastructure management
Cloud providers are moving to fully lights out environments which means they need a coherent solution that combines management information from data center assets and IT systems. One solution in use is a data center infrastructure management (DCIM) system that takes advantage of sensors, hardware, and software to track the state of the data center and the location of assets.

Many companies support the integration of the signalling from a lot of different vendors’ asset management tags into their DCIM products. This makes it easy for users to track assets using existing sensor arrays in the data center such as video security systems. The movement of any high value asset would trigger an alert on a sensor, which could be inserted into the video stream enabling the cloud provider to have an audio, video, and security log record.

Tracking can be integrated with other security options such as biometric aisle and cabinet locking solutions with robust audit and history logs. Integration of asset management alerts ensures an asset can be tracked in time and space far exceeding what other solutions deliver today.

With asset management and DCIM historically owned by different teams in the data center, integration offers a much higher level of security and asset protection because it takes advantage of the existing DCIM sensor grids. It drastically reduces costs by delivering operation teams a single product removing the need for retraining. As a result, teams are up to speed quicker and are less likely to miss key alerts.
Additionally, the ease in tracking hardware that needs to be replaced ensures that cloud vendors can meet service level agreements targets over system uptime.

Conclusion
High value physical assets in the data center must be carefully tracked and recorded to reduce the risk of theft. With cloud providers holding sensitive data from customers on assets that are easily stolen such as SSD drives, they also need to protect the data stored on that asset.
Data center teams can easily extend their existing DCIM solutions to provide asset management protection. Traditional solutions that simply recorded a server, switch, PDU, or even a rack as the key asset are no longer valid. Data is now the most critical asset that must be protected.

10/02/2018

IT Asset Management: Why You Should Care

Depending on the industry and size of the company, IT departments must manage and keep track of multiple IT assets, such as servers, networking gear, storage hardware, software packages, and more. But that doesn’t mean every IT shop has an IT Asset Management (ITAM) strategy in place.
So what’s the difference between simply managing assets and creating a true asset management strategy? Having an ITAM strategy moves your IT department from an improvised, on-the-fly approach to a carefully planned one, which can help you make more informed decisions about your IT infrastructure.
There are several benefits to creating an asset management strategy. Here are a few areas it could help, and why should care about it.

Improving Data Center Efficiency
Asset management gives you the opportunity to leverage needs and requirements with what you already have within your environment. Having the full picture of what you own and lease can help you see if there’s any technology that can be eliminated to save money. That way, you have looked at all the possible options before making another purchase.

Tracking Everything you Own
One of the most easily identifiable benefits of asset management is having a comprehensive list of every piece of equipment you lease, rent, or own, where they’re located, what they are used for, and any documented changes. This is the basis of savings, increased ROI, and data center efficiency.

Maintenance Contract Savings
Depending on the age of your asset, you may need different maintenance and support contracts. By tracking all your storage, server, and networking equipment in one place, you’ll be able to identify any lapses in coverage, consolidate support contracts, and find opportunities for third party maintenance after hardware has reached a product lifecycle milestone.

Integration Across Locations
Many enterprises have several locations and data centers. This presents the unique issue of overseeing both production and test/dev sites. Having an IT asset management strategy can help you effectively create inventory reports and more easily provide asset information for audits and other needs.

09/02/2018

05/02/2018

See you in London.

02/02/2018

Benefits for clients with Digitalor rack unit intelligent system

After using Digitalor rack unit assets intelligent management system, it can help users to realize the asset operation and maintenance closed-loop, reduce the risk of human operation and maintenance, improve the availability of data center, improve the operation and maintenance efficiency and improve the return on investment. Specific benefits below:


1. Real-time monitoring and management of the rack: It optimizes the utilization rate of the rack space and increases the annual income by more than 4% (Official statistics from Huawei).

2. Real-time monitoring of asset’s physical location: Can locate target assets quickly, save time cost of manual search.

3. Real-time monitoring of asset changes, automatic sync change data: Data will be uploaded to management platform in real time, the asset status is explicit for checking.

4. 100% data accuracy: Provide to clients with unprecedented accuracy which based on innovation technology MC-RFID.

5. Real-time asset inventory: No longer need manual inventory, also avoid the mistakes in the process, unmanned rapid inventory is realized.

6. Physical security monitoring of IT asset: Removing off assets under unauthorized conditions results in real-time alerts.

7. Full life cycle closed-loop management: U-tag conforms ISO international standard which is easy to expand due to it supports many manufacturers. Make the IT asset management completing full life cycle closed loop in data center.

8. Manpower shortage resolved: Solve the problem that the manpower shortage of infrastructure operation and maintenance in data center.

9. Avoid occupational injuries: The data center environment has strong electromagnetic radiation, noise and other adverse factors, solve the problems of physical and mental injuries caused by long-term operation and maintenance of infrastructure.

10. The infrastructure data link is connected: Extend resource sharing from IT facilities to infrastructure, the last gap of the intelligent operation is connected.