Nlyte Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) vs. Sunbird DCIM

Nlyte is well suited for keeping a detailed inventory of the assets in the hosting center. With the ability to import hosting center floor plans, knowing exactly where each asset is located is a snap. When alarms occur in monitored devices, this also provides faster resolution because the exact point of alarm can be displayed on the floor plan. Nlyte is also well suited for organizations with data center assets housed in multiple locations. In some cases, as with my organization, some of the locations are Telco rooms or closets. Again, when properly set up, a device causing an alarm can be pinpointed to its exact location.

Incentivized

There are a few things that need work from flexibility within the asset process documentation. The interfacing with CMDB will be easier if the asset documentation had more flexibility in the standard fields. The product will support our need for a central depository of all assets, connections, and usage within our data centers, which at this time is managed by a spreadsheet with limited access. The ability to review and set goals of environmental and capacity has not been easy, with dcTrack this has become much easier than dealing with Excel tabs.

Incentivized

• Nlyte Asset Optimizer (NAO) tracks every asset in our hosting centers and when integrated with Nlyte Energy Optimizer (NEO), which monitors the hosting center environment, we can see, at a glance, the asset causing the alarm and its exact location in the hosting center. This is a strength, as it provides for faster resolution of problems if/when they occur.
• Nlyte Asset Optimizer (NAO) has a lot of built-in reports that are great for looking at. For example, servers of a specific brand, or how many Us are taken up by servers. I see this as a strength and use this capability for capacity planning.

Incentivized

• Inventory tracking.
• Capacity planning.
• Integration with PowerIQ - manages power, cooling and humidity status.
• Provide power and network/SAN connect paths.
• Statistics on the infrastructure within a given data center.

Incentivized

• Nlyte Asset Optimizer (NAO) is currently all manual entry of assets. It would be great if NAO could provide for automated discovery of hosting center assets. This automation would be limited to ICMP and SNMP communication so not every asset can provide automated discovery, but it would be great for all IP addressable devices.

Incentivized

• Connectivity simplified.
• Flexibility in port and connection definition.
• Asset documentation of owners, project and responsible teams.

Incentivized

I am still using the other three products as they have features that Nlyte does not have, and that are really out of scope for Nlyte. I can give one example because this product is an in-house application. It is our CMDB application, and it interfaces with several other in-house systems to provide data that Nlyte is not designed for. Example: If we get an alarm from a server, and if there is currently a planned outage with a Request For Change (RFC), we ignore the alarm unless it exceeds the RFC window.

Incentivized

• Nlyte has had a positive return on investment (ROI) for my organization. A big factor in the ROI is having faster resolution times when alarms occur.

Incentivized

• Hard to say at this time what I will gain or the company will gain for the user but to understand all assets in a Data Center in a single location is a great tool for support and maintenance cost analysis.
• To be able to see or understand the power needs of a given location provides the need of understanding cost impact under the different location cost models.

Incentivized