Avocent Data Center Planner vs. Axibase Enterprise Reporter (AER)

Avocent Data Center Planner is well suited in helping us to capacity plan our data center, increase operations efficiency and keep track of available patch and switch ports. We are able to visually view wherein our data centers are underutilized and more importantly over-utilized. We can also follow the path of the cross-connects from one object to another visually providing us another troubleshooting tool in our datacenter. Previously we had Excel spreadsheets with this information and it's can be confusing to follow compared to a visual representation that Avocent Data Center Planner provides.

Incentivized

• Avocent Data Center Planner gave us an overview of our data center without the need to be physically there to perform an audit.
• We can visually map out and trace the cross-connect a device or server is using without a need of remote hands to trace the cable.
• It provides us the ability to capacity plan our data center. Giving us the ability to see what space is under or over-utilized and formulate a plan to adjust to correct it.

Incentivized

• The library of objects we can use in Avocent Data Center Planner needs to be expanded. There are times the server object we need is not available in the library.
• A more efficient way to connect objects together. It's way too easy to delete a connection mapping, a dialogue box asking if the connection should be deleted would be nice. I've accidentally deleted a connection before and it's annoying that I need to redo it.
• The ability to import diagrams into Avocent Data Center Planner would be nice. We have Visio diagram of racks and to utilize that instead of recreating it would help speed up the build in of a datacenter in the product.

Incentivized

Avocent Data Center Planner was far and away better than utilizing Microsoft Visio to manage our data center infrastructure. It provides us a centralized location for all information about our data center from the location of racks, to the devices in them, the device connections, etc. While Microsoft Visio can emulate the rack and device piece of Avocent Data Center Planner, it can't replicate its ability to provide the device connections. We have previously used Excel for that. Having one place for all of that information is also a plus for Avocent Data Center Planner, increasing the efficiency of our data center operations compared to using Microsoft Visio.

Incentivized

• A positive ROI on Avocent Data Center Planner allows us to improve our infrastructure planning by giving a visual representation of our data center so we can see where we can set up new equipment in the future.
• Another positive ROI is, we can visualize wherein our data center we are either over-utilized or underutilized increasing the efficiency of our operations.
• A further positive ROI is the complete record of device connections eliminated the need for remote hands to trace patch connections for troubleshooting purposes.
• Finally having one place to view information on our data center is also a positive ROI. This has increased our operations' ability to manage our data center.
• A negative ROI is the amount of time required to set up Avocent Data Center Planner. We had to start from scratch and recreate the Visio diagrams we already had.

Incentivized