RF Code Unveils Data Center Asset Management Framework

As the data center itself becomes more of a virtual entity, managing all the assets that make up that entity has become more challenging. In a world where virtual data centers are really data centers within data centers, IT organizations have a hard time keeping track of where anything is actually located.

To address that issues RF Code this week launched CenterScape, a framework consisting of best practices and streamlined methodologies built around the company’s real-time environmental monitoring and asset management software.

Designed to make it simpler to track assets that not only exist inside traditional data centers, but also small server rooms inside globally distributed data centers, colocation sites and other locations, Richard Jenkins, vice president of marketing and business development for RF Code, said the goal is to provide a lightweight framework that can be easily deployed to track IT assets.

Rather than deploying a large-scale data center infrastructure management (DCIM) application to discover and track that information, CenterScape provides an alternative approach to capturing much the same level of detailed information that might be enough for most organizations or can be fed into a DCIM application running in a centralized data center facility.

Tools included within CenterScape include predictive analysis, U-level rack asset management, 3D data center visualization, asset lifecycle reporting, dynamic global mapping, and a set of open application programming interfaces (APIs).

“We’re providing a bag of tools in a framework to easily capture data,” Jenkins said. “In some case that’s enough; in other cases that data gets fed into a DCIM application.”

The challenge, he said, is that IT infrastructure tends to move around. All told, industry analysts estimate that as much as 20 percent of all IT infrastructure moves within a given year.

The RF Code approach to asset management is designed to more flexibly adapt to the requirements of distributed computing environments that are subject to frequent changes. With the rise of the Internet of Things, he added, those IT infrastructure assets are becoming more distributed than ever.

As the lines where one data center ends and another begins continue to blur, IT organizations are challenged from an asset management perspective like never before. From a business perspective there’s clearly more riding on those IT assets.

In fact, Jenkins noted, many data centers are now the single most expensive investment many companies make, which in many cases means that for the first time businesses are now holding IT organizations truly accountable for how that asset is actually managed.