Celina

Supply chain shortages, product outages and long lead times continue to be a factor in most, if not all, areas of business around the world. Just when you think you have a wrinkle pressed flat, another seam begins to crease. At the same time organizations and employees still feel the pressure to meet customer requests, revenue goals and deadlines. While we can’t smooth out all the supply chain issues you are experiencing, here’s what we’ve learned works to help mitigate the delays. Start early. Begin your project as soon as you can and add time to the overall project timeframe [...]

Written by Nate Josephs Sr. Systems Engineer/Data Center Manager In the previous articles on policies, processes, and procedures, I defined policies as guidelines or rules for all work impacting the data center.  Processes are high-level steps needed to perform a desired output.  Procedures serve the distinct role of explaining in detail how to perform tasks.  Procedures minimize error by ensuring work is performed consistently, efficiently, and conforms to best practices.  Within this fourth and final article on policies, processes and procedures, I will offer the following tips for creating effective procedures. Determine the Right Amount of Detail:  As mentioned, the [...]

Written by Nate Josephs Sr. Systems Engineer/Data Center Manager Within this series of articles on policies, processes, and procedures, I’ve discussed the importance of implementing all three documents in order to minimize risk in the data center.  The first article explained the differences between each document and the second one provided details on creating effective policies.  In this third article, I will cover what processes are, how they differ from policies and procedures, and provide tips for creating effective processes. As mentioned, policies are rules that define expected outcomes for activities performed.  Both processes and procedures support policies by ensuring [...]

Written by Nate Josephs Sr. Systems Engineer/Data Center Manager In the previous article, I discussed the importance of implementing all three documents (policies, processes, and procedures) to minimize risk in the data center.  I further discussed that policies differ from processes and procedures as policies are guidelines and rules based on expected outcomes versus instructions on how to perform work.  In this article, I will explain how to create effective policies for your data center. To create useful policies for data centers, data center managers need to start by engaging leadership, internal/external customers, and all other key stakeholders to define [...]

Policy, Process, and Procedure: Why You Need All Three Written by Nate Josephs Sr. Systems Engineer/Data Center Manager You may have heard the statement “Human error is the leading cause of most data center outages.”  An effective way to minimize human error is by implementing three documents: policies, processes, and procedures.  Implementing all three documents minimizes risk by establishing what outcomes are expected, delineating the steps involved to produce the expected outcomes, and explaining in detail how to accomplish those outcomes as they relate to the data center. Most people understand policies are essentially rules.  However, the difference between processes [...]

Three Tactics to Successfully Deploy Your DCIM Software Written by Nate Josephs Sr. Systems Engineer/Data Center Manager In the previous Tips from a Data Center Manager blog, I discussed how to pick the right DCIM product and how to compare costs.  Once an organization overcomes the challenge of picking the right software, they face additional obstacles when deploying DCIM.  The following is the third and last article in the series on DCIM where I discuss common reasons why DCIM implementations “lose steam” and fail.  Also included are three tactics to make implementation successful. Focus Gets Lost – Data center teams [...]

How to Pick the Right DCIM Software and Compare Costs Written by Nate Josephs Sr. Systems Engineer/Data Center Manager In the previous Tips from a Data Center Manager blog, I discussed the benefits of DCIM by describing six valuable features it provides.  These features include: floor plans and rack views, real-time monitoring, “what-if” scenario creation, future capacity forecasting, integration with other tools, and online dashboards.  Unfortunately, organizations often become paralyzed trying to choose the right DCIM software and become confused trying to compare costs.  The following is the second in a series of three DCIM articles that identifies challenges in [...]

Six Valuable Features Offered by DCIM Written by Nate Josephs Sr. Systems Engineer/Data Center Manager Prior to data center infrastructure management (DCIM), data center managers struggled to gather data center infrastructure data to understand existing capacity, view monitoring points, predict and proactively plan for future capacity needs, or integrate with existing systems. Data was collected from disparate sources, manually entered and was merely a snapshot in time soon to be outdated.  These struggles were eliminated by taking advantage of some valuable features DCIM offers.  The following is the first article in a series of three regarding DCIM.  In this article [...]

The most crucial stage of Asset Lifecycle Management is the installation. In most cases, assets need to be installed before they can be used. During the installation stage, the Design Team develops their capacity to support the implementation of selected assets. This team will then partner with project managers, external consultants, and intermediary teams to ensure they have the competencies to support and sustain installation at the employee level, as well as the facility level. Organization managers are often surprised at how much preparation and resources are needed during the installation stage. Companies will want to utilize Project Teams (such [...]

Four Ways to Improve IDF Closets for Edge Computing Written by Nate Josephs Sr. Systems Engineer/Data Center Manager IDF closets, also known as telecom or wiring closets, serve as connection points between voice/data carrier circuits entering a building and end user phones, personal computers, etc.  They contain racks, patch panels and some network gear.  Outages in IDF closets may only impact some internal employees vs. data centers where outages may directly impact customers. With a less critical role, maintenance, and operations standards for IDF closets is typically lower than for data centers. Edge computing is an IT service delivery model [...]