Tracking and managing data center cabling is one of the most overlooked aspects of data center management. However, when it’s not done properly, it can cause all kinds of problems from costly downtime to inefficient use of capacity. Don’t settle for cable spaghetti. Keep reading to find out the basics about data center cabling, understand how to track and organize it, and learn how the best data center managers in the industry are dramatically simplifying cable management.

Many organizations perform periodic data center asset audits to report accurate asset information by cabinet and U position. This information is needed to remotely plan moves, adds, and changes and to facilitate corporate reporting. Data center asset management is often a struggle due to the complex, distributed, and constantly changing environments of modern data centers. They are manual, time-consuming, and human error can result in inaccurate data.

Data center automation is expected to rapidly change the data center industry. Look at any data center industry publication, website, or event and there will be plenty of content predicting what data center automation is going to look like. Data center professionals are curious on how automation is going to change their jobs and data center management. The truth is that we already know.

Data center energy consumption is on the rise as the demand for computing power and digital services continues to grow. To reduce data center carbon emissions, many data center managers now have corporate sustainability goals that they must comply with. According to KPMG, 80% of companies now report on their sustainability. The benefits of increasing data center energy efficiency are vast.

Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) is a ratio of the total amount of power used by a data center to the power delivered to IT equipment. The PUE metric was developed by The Green Grid to measure the overall energy efficiency of data centers, and it has been one of the most popular data center KPIs since its introduction in 2007.

Data center capacity refers to key data center resources (i.e., power, space, cooling, and power/network port connections) that are available to meet the requirements of current and future IT demand. Accurately planning and managing data center capacity is essential for maintaining uptime and increasing efficiency. Failure to do so can be very expensive and detrimental to the business.

After becoming increasingly popular in the mid-2000s, cloud computing has revolutionized the data center industry. Aside from providing cost-savings, security, mobility, and scalability benefits, cloud computing was also expected to be more environmentally friendly than other data storing and processing methods. By being highly efficient, cloud operators can reduce the use of electricity and other materials that typically increase a data center’s carbon footprint.

Cooling systems are one of the most important components of a data center. They often consume about half of all the data center’s total energy and are necessary to maintain a safe operating environment. The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) thermal guidelines recommend that the ideal temperature for server inlets is between 64.4° F and 80.6° F with a relative humidity between 40% and 60%.

Do you know what your power density per rack is? How about what it costs to power each individual rack for a year? Or all your racks combined? The fact is that most data center managers don’t know this information, which can be incredibly valuable when it comes to power capacity planning, energy management, and maximizing the utilization of existing resources. That’s why we created a simple and free tool to make it easy for you to understand your power density and data center energy costs.

As modern data centers grow increasingly complex and distributed, data center technology and infrastructure can become more difficult to manage, and it becomes harder for IT decision-makers to find qualified candidates. According to Uptime Institute, 50% of data center owners and operators are struggling to find qualified candidates. In recent years, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated industry trends such as remote data center management, deepening the already severe data center skills gap.