Vendor profile: Nlyte Software's 7 Suite

Based in Silicon Valley (San Mateo) with offices across North America and Europe, Nlyte Software was formed in 2004 originally as Global DataCenter Management (GDCMTM).

Today, more than 10 years later, Nlyte Software is delivering its 7th generation of products to hundreds of customers worldwide, based on market and customer feedback. The company directly focuses on clients, ensuring they derive maximum business value from their DCIM deployments. Nlyte works to ensure that their solutions are tightly integrated into existing business processes, IT systems and infrastructure.

Today, two factors help define Nlyte’s DCIM solution:

As a growing organization, Nlyte’s DCIM solution continues to evolve with the demands of the market. Some of the company’s customers include, BMC, Canon, TransUnion, HP and Suncorp.

The Nlyte data center infrastructure management (DCIM) solution automates the management of processes, policies and dependencies that surround data center infrastructure.

“We aim to simplify the entire data center management process through a next-generation set of tools,” said Doug Sabella, CEO of Nlyte. “By abstracting the logical and physical components of the data center, we incorporate true intelligence around functions like capacity planning, asset controls, real-time monitoring, reporting, and even workflow management.”

Nlyte Suite 7 DCIM Solution Details

Formerly called Global DataCenter Management, Nlyte is a leading provider of DCIM solutions. Founded in 2003, the company has quickly transformed itself into a key player in the DCIM segment. Nlyte 7 Suite is a purpose-driven DCIM solution from Nlyte that is scalable, fully extensible and customizable. The industry patent asset allocation, along with contextual content repository, is the strength of the Nlyte 7 Suite. Here is a comprehensive evaluation of the Nlyte 7 Suite:

Asset Management

The Nlyte DataCenter allows you to holistically manage your entire infrastructure. Nlyte uses a central repository of assets with key attributes while maintaining contextual relationships between assets and asset parameters.Working in conjunction with the Nlyte Materials Catalog, it records asset attributes like size, weight, power and connections, and automatically updates the database. It effectively manages physical, logical and virtual assets along with the asset location. Assets can be grouped by cage, pod, logical or user-defined categories. It offers automatic asset discovery and reconciliation.

Power Management

The Nlyte Connection Manager enables you to graphically view power connections within the infrastructure at any level. You can check the entire power path, including connection points and connect information, right from the supplier’s sub-station feed to the data center through UPS, PDUs, generators and power strips at any level. You can assess the asset properties, connection type, connection details, destination details and source port information. The graphical view can be filtered based on fiber, power or network. The circuit endpoint allows for the viewing of asset connectivity. This connectivity data can be exported into Excel spreadsheets.

Thermal Management

The Nlyte DataCenter enables you to map the entire power path of the power from the supplier’s sub-station to the datacenter and to each connected device. The suite monitors the power consumption of every device including air conditioners and IT and non-IT equipment. It provides clear visibility into power usage effectiveness (PUE) values by calculating the IT equipment power (ITEP) and the total facility power (TFP). Based on these values, automatic provisioning of power devices can be achieved.

Space Management

The Nlyte Floor Planner provides a CAD-style graphical user interface to visualize the physical layout of the racks, rooms and floors in the data center. You can easily track the asset chain and make changes accordingly. Power provision, airflow, heat control and use of space can be effectively managed using this application. Color-coded designations are given to different performance thresholds that apply to each device. A layered representation of the entire asset infrastructure can be viewed. At the same time, categorized views of cabinets, racks, cage representations, floor standing servers and power infrastructure can be observed.

Visual Modeling

Nlyte Dashboard & Reporting provides a number of pre-defined and user-defined dashboards to visualize critical operational metrics. It offers visual representation of assets in the form of charts and graphs. The built-in analytics engine enables you to create real-time analytics of heat and power metrics in addition to a detailed view of asset inventory. With Nlyte visual modeling, spreadsheets or Visio diagrams are not necessary.

Hypothetical Modeling

Nlyte Predict enables you to envisage the future state of your data center’s power, cooling, space and networking capabilities based on real-time analytics and historical usage metrics. Using these “what-if” models, you can assess the effect of any change made to the infrastructure before actually making the change. While installing new assets, you can determine if there is enough space, power and networking options. You can investigate the benefits of upgrading your servers, and you can create forecasted projects and envisage actual costs.

Access & Control

The Nlyte Integrator is a NgaugeAPI-based connector that enables you to integrate DCIM solutions with a number of third party applications or existing systems like VMware, HP, RF Code, Server Tech and CMDB.It is based on Intel’s Datacenter Management technology. Being a purpose-built web service, Nlyte Integrator makes it easy to integrate it with existing systems or third party solutions.

Reporting & Alarming

The Nlyte Dashboard & Reporting feature allows you to quickly generate a wide variety of reports to obtain critical operational metrics. It comes with a built-in reporting and analytics engine. You can use templates or customize your reports for the IT, finance and executive departments. Reports can be automatically generated and delivered. Report delivery is quick and consistent.