There are many benefits to Data Center Automation. It makes data center operations more efficient, reduces costs, and improves productivity. It can also improve operational security and reliability by reducing the manual input required from IT professionals.
Data Center Automation Types
Many data center managers find their job more challenging than it has to be. They’re burdened by the hassle of dealing with scripts and manual copy-and-paste management when they need to automate a new server or network configuration.
Infrastructure as code is a best practice for infrastructure management. Still, it can be difficult and time-consuming to configure a server manually or write a script without the right tools. Luckily, there are tools in the industry that make it easier to handle all the scripting tasks you need to do to manage your servers, networks, and resources.
Data center automation makes it easier for IT professionals in small businesses to manage the infrastructure of the company’s IT systems. The price of software support services can be high, especially on products that are not used daily and require specialized training to learn how to use them.
In a nutshell, there are three types of Automation:
Lifecycle Automation
Lifecycle automation is the process of planning, designing, and deploying data center infrastructure in a manner that is consistent with business goals and service level agreements (SLAs). The purpose of lifecycle automation is to reduce the number of manual tasks performed by IT staff to manage their data centers.
Life cycle automation can be achieved using tools that automate various tasks, including design, provisioning, monitoring, capacity planning and management, security management, and change or configuration management.
It involves automating the design and build process for data centers, such as provisioning new servers and configuring them for use in the data center. It also includes setting up an automated management system that monitors all resources in real-time and ensures services are available 24/7.
Business Process Automation
Business process automation (BPA) involves using machine learning algorithms to automate manual processes to improve efficiency. It can improve efficiency in managing applications and workloads in the data center.
Using APIs, integrated systems allow the management platform to control day-to-day operational tasks such as provisioning, monitoring performance, scaling out strategies, or rolling back changes when necessary.
Operational Automation
Operational Automation is the process of enabling a service provider’s business processes to operate themselves primarily. In essence, operational Automation is a way to improve delivery efficiency while reducing costs associated with human intervention.
The goal is to optimize physical assets within a data center, such as network equipment and power distribution units (PDUs). This Automation enables providers to offer on-demand agile services without investing in additional hardware or software.
A successful operational automation system will automate business processes and tasks that are at least semi-routine and predictable, thus freeing up staff members for more complex and creative work.
The Benefits of Data Center Automation
The benefits of data center automation are precious to businesses operating in a competitive industry—any company in the information technology sector would benefit from reduced deployment times, increased efficiency, and decreased costs.
Here are the main benefits:
-
Increasing productivity and efficiency
Data center automation solutions have been shown to increase employee productivity by as much as 10%. These solutions can automate many tasks requiring manual intervention or time-consuming processes that human beings need to be more capable of with the same level of accuracy.
Automation also improves efficiency in data centers by making them easier to maintain and reliable in the event of unscheduled downtime. One of the most apparent benefits is that Automation provides a sense of consistency across your data center network.
Source: Energy Efficiency Metrics for a Green Data Center Facility.
-
Improving service quality and SLA compliance
By centralizing processes and automating manual tasks, Automation allows you to quickly locate, diagnose, and resolve any issues with IT infrastructure. It reduces end-user downtime and helps you meet service-level agreements (SLAs).
Automation tools can help you meet your SLAs by automatically identifying service requests and ensuring timely resolution. By automating manual processes and streamlining how support teams work together, you can provide better service quality for your customers.
-
Reducing downtime and maintenance costs
In today’s competitive business environment, downtime is not an option. Your business needs a data center with automated systems to ensure maximum uptime. Automated systems reduce downtime by quickly detecting and resolving problems before they become major issues. With a fully automated system, there are no more manual processes that may lead to mistakes or oversights.
-
Increasing security, control, and accountability
In terms of security, Automation helps reduce risk by reducing human error. When humans are entrusted with making sure that action happens correctly, there’s always the risk that they will make a mistake. Automation reduces this possibility by performing tasks without any possibility of human error. In addition, Automation can check for potential problems and take appropriate action before any damage can occur. Network administrators can sleep better at night, knowing their data is protected from malicious attacks.
Conclusion
Data center infrastructure management is a difficult task, even when done manually. It’s hard to know if you have all the correct information, and it’s hard to see if you have everything covered. It takes time and resources and needs to scale better.
Data center automation is essential because it makes the data center management process more efficient and secure. Efficiency means that fewer people are needed to oversee the operation of a data center, so the total amount of labor costs for the data center is reduced. It also means that a data center can respond to changes in demand or the introduction of new applications more quickly.
With Automation, that task becomes much easier. You can use data center automation to ensure you cover all your bases. You’ll see where your gaps are, what needs to be fixed, and how to fix them, so you can focus on optimizing your infrastructure instead of dealing with it as an afterthought.
If you’re responsible for managing a company’s IT infrastructure, you want to put Automation to use in your business operations. Data center management software can help you reduce costs and save time by automating many things that would otherwise have to be done manually.
Read also: Green Data Center Cooling System for Energy Efficiency.