Physical Infrastructure Management Feature Editorial

Data centers have always been fundamental to business success, but they have also been a natural source of operational inefficiency due to the silo-based nature of their design, with each system of their physical infrastructure typically running on its own system with its own management software. The growth of all-IP network solutions, however, have allowed these disparate systems – including not only traditional data center infrastructure, but also security systems, power and cooling facilities, automation solutions, and all other systems – to be converged on a single IP network.

 

This allows the entire physical infrastructure to be interconnected, enabling more efficient management and operation of the entire data center with greater efficiency, flexibility, and security, delivering an inherently more optimized and cost-effective data center.

 

This idea of unifying the physical infrastructure in data centers to enable faster and more reliable access to resources – critical to the continued growth of any enterprise – is fostered by Panduit’s UPI vision, and supported by its Physical Infrastructure Manager (PIM) platform in conjunction with its Panview IQ (PViQ) hardware. The PIM solution enables the intelligent, automated management of the entire physical infrastructure with data centers through end-to-end visibility and control to support connectivity to the logical infrastructure.

 

Such visibility into and monitoring of the physical infrastructure is a must in a converged network environment, to ensure the real-time access to applications and other resources is available to users in multiple locations, using multiple devices, and a variety of access methods.

 

Panduit’s PIM solution enables this insight into the network and its various components by enabling patch field scans at any and all times – 24/7/365 – giving network administrators real-time data on what is happening in their data center infrastructures.

 

Specifically, the PIM solution increases network security by providing real-time notification of any unauthorized access or changes to the patch field, simplifying the isolation and resolution of faults or breaches. It also allows infrastructure components to be easily reconfigured to mitigate downtime via an intuitive point and click interface that provides an interactive physical infrastructure link map.

 

To support the real-time visibility for IT managers, Panduit’s PIM solution adds automated reporting, providing documentation of physical layer connectivity, status, and metrics, reducing reporting time and ensuring the accuracy of the data. The added accuracy and timeliness of reporting also allows for more effective policy management and regulatory compliance, both increasingly important parts of an IT manager’s duties.

 

Ultimately, Panduit’s UPI vision is about data center optimization, which requires both resource utilization data and access to that data. The PIM solution allows IT managers to access network data remotely, enabling them to address potential issues quickly from anywhere, and delivers asset tracking information, including indentifying available or underutilized resources. This allows the system to be quickly reconfigured, as access and capacity limits are stretched, to leverage available resources rather than investing in costly new equipment.

 

By leveraging industry standards and a Web-based GUI, Panduit’s PIM solution provides an easy-to-use platform that integrates easily into existing management tools, but also provides the necessary tools to enable IT managers to effectively mitigate risk within the converged data center infrastructure through real-time visibility into all critical network components, allowing near 100 percent uptime of the physical infrastructure, which is critical to ensuring availability of the critical logical systems the physical infrastructure supports.