IT Management

Traditional methodologies for monitoring the data centre environment are no longer sufficient. With technologies such as blade servers driving up cooling demands and regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley driving up security requirements, the physical environment in the data centre must be watched more closely. Find out more about the threats that exist regarding a class of distributed montioring points that is often ignored, in this white paper.

In the wider discussion about how to save costs and energy in the data centre, physical infrastructure preventive maintenance (PM) is sometimes neglected as an important tool for controlling TCO and downtime. PM is performed specifically to prevent faults from ocurring, but IT and facilities managers can improve systems uptime through a better underderstanding of PM best practices. More here.

Both hot and cold air containment can significantly improve the predictability and efficiency of data centre cooling systems. While both approaches eliminate the mixing of hot and cold air, there are practical differences in implementation that have significant consequences. This paper examines both methodologies and highlights the reasons why hot aisle containment emerges as the preferred best practice.

The development of standards for the measurement and specification of data centre efficiency is an essential step in the global effort to reduce the environmental impact of data centres. This paper explains some of the metrics that have been used and suggests which is the most effective.

In the recession, businesses face the challenge of achieving more with less. At the same time, environmental concerns mean that society as a whole must use less power and reduce its carbon emissions. With virtualisation, and newer hardware, the fact is companies can achieve energy savings at the same time as improving the performance of their IT infrastructure and business process. In this How To Guide, eWEEK Europe offers IT departments the freshest information on the subject, and practical advice.