Page 245 - Shaping smarter and more sustainable cities - Striving for sustainable development goals

2.1.1.10 Data center infrastructure management

Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) is the integration of Information and
Communication technology (ICT) and facility management disciplines to centralize monitoring,
management and intelligent capacity planning of a data center's critical systems. Achieved through
the implementation of specialized software, hardware and sensors; DCIM enables common, real‐
time monitoring and management platform for all interdependent systems across IT and facility
infrastructures.

Depending on the type of implementation, DCIM products can help data centers managers identify
and eliminate sources of risk to increase availability of critical IT systems. DCIM products also can
be used to identify interdependencies between facility and IT infrastructures to alert the facility
manager to gaps in system redundancy, and provide dynamic, holistic benchmarks on power
consumption and efficiency to measure the effectiveness of "green IT" initiatives.
Measuring and understanding important data centers efficiency metrics. A lot of the discussion in
this area has focused on energy issues, but other metrics can give a more detailed picture of the
data centers operations. Server, storage, and staff utilization metrics can contribute to a more
complete view of an enterprise data centers. In many cases, disc capacity goes unused and in many
instances the organizations run their servers at 20% utilization or less. More effective automation
tools can also improve the number of servers or virtual machines that a single admin can handle.

The Recommendation ITU‐T L.1300 "Best practices for green data centers", recommended a
possible methodology for cooling data centers with high density ICT devices.

Recommendation ITU‐T L.1300 describes best practices aimed at reducing the negative impact of
data centers on the climate. It is commonly recognized that data centers will have an ever‐increasing
impact on the environment in the future. The application of the best practices defined in this
Recommendation can help owners and managers to build future data centers, or improve existing
ones, to operate in an environmentally responsible manner. Such considerations will strongly
contribute to a reduction in the impact of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT)
sector on climate change.

2.1.2 Communication layer

This is one of the main aspects of the ICT infrastructure. Particular attention should be paid in both
the national and urban infrastructure, since the backhauls will feed the backbones that are bound
to the international links. Access networks are key for the development of SSC. However they are
issues related the deployment of antennas which pose problems in setting up access networks.

ITU‐T's Technical Reports and Specifications 235