Data Center Asset Tracking & Management Software

Custom RFID data center inventory management with a rapid national roll out.

What Is Data Center Asset Management?

Data center asset management is the set of business practices designed to join financial, contractual, and inventory functions to support life cycle management and strategic decision making for the IT environment. This involves tracking and managing hardware assets such as servers, server racks, storage, networking, computers and computer networks from acquisition to disposal, as well as software assets such as license entitlements.

Why Data Centers Need RFID Asset Management Software

Data center industries face plenty of challenges, and that has led to an increase in the importance of data center asset tracking. This process is important because it checks many boxes that data center locations face throughout the lifespan and day-to-day operation of their assets.

Data centers are critical locations with plenty of contingencies to avoid faults or failures. Data center asset management software ensures that assets have appropriate levels of protection for all of the challenges these locations face. The fact of the matter is that industries need data to operate, and interrupted data flows can halt any operation. Additionally, organizations must focus on ensuring reliable power and risk management.

With data center asset management software, our team provides the following benefits for your organization:

We help you collect data on the data you produce.
Our data center asset inventory software allows you to extend the life of your power assets.
We help your team monitor new assets and ensure they work effectively and efficiently.

Don’t neglect the importance of these benefits. Grow your organization like never before with data center inventory management software today!

Data Center Inventory: The Challenge That Helped Create Our Software

vXchnge, a national colocation provider with data centers across the US, needed to know the location and status of their customers’ servers in real time. They were looking for real-time data center asset tracking and asset inventory management in all their data centers nationwide.

Providing real-time inventory status and asset tracking were additional services vXchnge’s customers had requested and would be a key differentiator for vXchnge among its competitors. But more than that, these services are necessary today for security and compliance purposes.

In addition to solving for an almost simultaneous national rollout, vXchnge also needed this solution to be deployed at a price point per unit or location that worked for their pricing structure and was in line with their competitive landscape and customers’ expectations.

Track IT and Data Center Assets with DCIM Software

The Asset Vue team has decades of combined experience managing data centers of all shapes and sizes. We understand the data center environment and the importance of reliability, scalability, and accuracy for any data center asset tracking and inventory management solution.

With our data center inventory software, we redefine the ease and simplicity of managing your data. Our software tracks and stores data, giving you real-time reporting and ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements and rules. But we know that it’s not enough to walk the walk. That’s why we come well-equipped with experience that proves our data center inventory management software can work for you.

Asset Vue partnered on this project with Impinj, a world-class leader in the manufacturer of RAIN RFID (radio-frequency identification devices). Our teams came together to develop a 100% custom suite of hardware, software, and processes to solve vXchnge’s unique inventory management challenge.

Data Center Asset Management Software: Learn More About Asset Vue

As a result of this partnership, vXchnge was able to offer a competitively priced asset tracking service to all its clients nationally. By working with Asset Vue’s deployment teams, the vXchnge teams on the ground could roll the new service out consistently across all locations according to the company’s desired time frame and within the required budget.

You can hear directly from the teams involved in this project about precisely what solutions were deployed and what the results looked like by watching a recording of a webinar with Gary Aron, Partner and co-founder at Asset Vue; Wendy Werblin, Director of Industry Solutions at Impinj; and Tom Banta, Senior VP Product Management & Development at vXchnge.

What is datacenter inventory management ?

Why is data center asset tracking and management important?

Data centers are critical infrastructure, so asset management software can help organizations monitor new assets, prevent theft, collect data, extend the life of power assets, and ensure reliable power and risk management.

Overall, data center asset management is a key tool for any size data center, but especially enterprise level, to ensure that their data centers are running at an optimal level. It can enable organizations to identify potential areas of improvement, ensure their assets are secure, and maximize the efficiency and performance of their data centers.

What resources are needed for RFID asset tracking in data centers?

Resources needed for asset monitoring include: tracking systems, physical inspections, asset tags, barcode scanners, auditing software, inventory reports, network-attached monitoring systems, capacity planning, changing management strategies, virtual and logical systems, power monitoring, system utilization systems, resource consolidation, floor and rack space management, modeling scenarios, and online monitoring systems. Additionally, personnel with deep asset management expertise and electrical engineers for relay protection and post fault analysis may be needed. All of these resources enable data center operations and maintenance teams to improve security, prevent downtime, ensure regulatory compliance, gain critical inventory oversight, establish key workflows, and provide organizational accountability.

What surveillance solutions are available for asset tracking in data centers?

Combining different surveillance solutions can significantly improve performance in data center asset management by providing a more comprehensive view of the facility, its operations, and its assets. DCIM solutions can help companies track their assets, monitor environmental and power conditions, and accurately plan for capacity. This can help to eliminate costly, error-prone manual processes, decrease financial inefficiency, and maximize resource utilization. This approach can also help to identify potential risks, such as unauthorized or unplanned changes, and enable the data center to proactively adjust resources in order to avoid potential downtime. This can lead to a reduced total cost of ownership (TCO), better data security, lower risk of downtime, increased agility, faster response time to issues, and increased labor efficiency.

What fixed assets should be tracked in data center environment?

In a data center environment, fixed assets should be tracked such as networking equipment, servers, switches, rack PDUs, storage, patch panels, applications, and life safety solutions. These assets should be tracked in real-time to ensure accurate documentation, reduce labor costs, reduce waste and cost, optimize data center availability and utilization, maximize safety and security, and enforce evacuation plans and testing.

What are the components of a Data Center Asset Management system?

Data Center Asset Management system involves the management of physical components of computers and computer networks, software and virtual assets, as well as hardware and software assets. The components of a Data Center Asset Management system include: hardware asset management, software asset management, asset identification, inventory management, request and approval process, procurement management, life cycle management, redeployment and disposal management, license entitlements, IT asset repository, supply chain, help desk, procurement, HR systems, ITSM, financial information capture, rack devices, device modules and blades, floor mounted facilities and IT equipment, operating systems, VM software, utilities, applications, warranty, service contracts, service cycle and lifetimes, business service, application, business unit or department, contact information, and user-defined properties.

What is the right time to implement RFID

The migration of a data center no matter the size is not an easy thing to accomplish. Planning and coordination up front is the key to success!
Prior to migrating equipment having all of the required asset information such as number of devices, device types, application hardware, and software configurations updated is paramount. It is not uncommon for managers to think their data is up to date only to find that during a migration that critical information is missing or inaccurate. This leads to missed commitments and costly and time consuming resolutions during migrations at a time the company can least afford it and windows to get work completed are already tight.

Having an updated/accurate inventory is one of the biggest challenges in the data center today. Barcoding is an improvement over the traditional visual method of validation of assets. RFID is emerging as the technology best suited for tracking assets and keeping asset information updated with the added benefit; accuracy of information increases considerably. In many cases the ROI is surprisingly fast with an ROI often achieved in as little as one year.

With RFID technology migrations become much easier and tracking of equipment through all steps of the migration helps to assure a successful move of technology assets. During the planning phase of a migration project is a great time to upgrade to an RFID solution as you can not only reduce the planning and execution cycles you can ensure that you have an ongoing asset tracking process that will ensure 99.9% accuracy of information.

8 Reasons why RFID makes sense for data centers

Time: Current manual inventory takes approximately 1 hour per rack when you include validation of data in asset inventory. Leveraging RFID this is reduced to less than 1 minute per rack.
Morale: High talent resources are used to gather or validate asset inventory often taking weeks of time to do so. With the time saved leveraging RFID about 90% of your resources time would be recovered to do other work.
Convenience: Asset tags and barcodes often are placed in locations that are difficult to get an accurate read of the barcode. Often these labels are obstructed by cables, rack components and they are difficult to read. With RFID you get 100% read of all equipment.
Granularity: Tracking components internal to equipment such as blades or storage is easily tracked using RFID technology.
Find it fast: Tracking equipment within a facility (or across multiple facilities) is possible with RFID. Equipment can be tracked as it enters a facility and followed anywhere in the facility.
Accuracy: RFID is a mature technology that is prven successful in many applicaitons.
ROI: Get a return on your investment in as little as a year. This might be one fo the most cost effective projects you complete all year!
Usability: DCIM tools that leverage RFID are more effective using updated information.

Find Out How Our Data Center Inventory Software Can Help Your Business

Team up with Asset Vue and get the DCIM software for your data center asset management needs.

See how our data center inventory management team can tailor a cost-effective RFID inventory solution to your data center’s unique asset tracking challenges.