Server Management Software for Data Centers

As a company grows, so does its need for computing resources. This applies to both ordinary companies and providers, including those who rent out dedicated servers. When the total number of racks exceeds 10, you will run into problems.

How to inventory servers and spare parts? Or how to keep the data center in good condition by detecting and eliminating potential threats in time. How to find a rack with broken equipment? How to prepare physical machines for work? Doing these tasks manually will take too long and require a huge admin team in your IT department.

However, there is a better solution - the use of special software that automates the management of the data center. Let's take a look at the data center management tools on the market today.

1. DCImanager

DCImanager is a platform for managing physical equipment: servers, switches, PDUs, routers; as well as monitoring server and data center resources. It helps optimize the use of computing power, increase the efficiency of the IT department and flexibly transform the infrastructure in accordance with business challenges.

DCImanager can be flexibly integrated into an IT infrastructure of any complexity. Hundreds of companies from various industries (including hosting, ICT, data centers, manufacturing, finance, etc.) use it to solve their problems.

The main features of DCImanager are:

DCIM with multi-vendor support and hardware inventory.
Monitoring and notification system.
Remote access to servers.
Management of switches, physical networks and VLANs.
Server sales automation for hosting providers.
Access of personnel (or clients) to selected infrastructure nodes.

2. Opendcim

It is currently the only free software in its class. It is open source and developed as an alternative to commercial DCIM solutions. Allows you to take inventory, draw a DC map, track temperature and power consumption.

On the other hand, it does not support remote power off, server reboot, and OS installation. However, it is widely used by non-profit organizations around the world.

Thanks to the open source code, Opendcims should work great in companies that have their own developers.

3. NOC-PS

A commercial system designed to initialize physical and virtual machines, it has wide functionality for advanced equipment preparation: installing OS and other software, setting up network configurations.

There is integration with WHMCS (Web Hosting Billing & Automation Platform) and Blesta (Billing and Client Management Platform). However, this is not the best choice if you need to have a map of the data center at hand and see the location of the racks.

NOC-PS will cost you 100 euros per year for each package of 100 dedicated servers. Suitable for small and medium sized companies.

4. EasyDCIM

EasyDCIM is a paid software focused mainly on providing servers. It provides the ability to install OS and other software, makes it easier to navigate the DC, allowing you to draw a diagram of the racks.

At the same time, the product itself does not include IP and DNS management, control over switches. These and other features become available after installing additional modules, both free and paid (including WHMCS integration).

The basic plan offers 100 server licenses starting at $99 per year. Due to the pricing policy, EasyDCIM can be a bit pricey for smaller companies, while medium to large companies can try it out.

5. Ansible Tower

Ansible Tower is an enterprise-level computing infrastructure management tool from RedHat. The main idea of this solution was the possibility of centralized deployment of servers for various user devices.

Thanks to this, Ansible Tower can perform almost any possible programming operation with integrated software and has an amazing statistics collection module. On the dark side, we have a lack of integration with popular billing and pricing systems.

6. Puppet Enterprise

Developed on a commercial basis and considered as ancillary software for IT departments. Designed for OS and other software installed on servers and user devices both at the stage of initial deployment and at the stage of further operation.

Unfortunately, inventory and more advanced schemes for interaction between devices (cable connection, protocols, and others) are still under development.

Puppet Enterprise has a free and fully functional version for 10 computers. The cost of an annual license is $120 per device.

Can work for large corporations.

7. NetBox

NetBox is an open source IP address and data center infrastructure management platform that was created by the DigitalOcean networking team to store information about your networks, virtual machines, inventory, and more.

8. RackTables

RackTables is a tiny open source data center and server room asset management tool that allows you to track hardware assets, network addresses, rack space, network configuration and more!

9. Device 42

Mainly designed for monitoring data centers. It has great inventory tools and automatically builds hardware/software dependency maps. DC map built Device 42, displays temperature, free space, and other rack parameters both graphically and by marking racks with a specific color. However, software installation and billing integration are not supported.

10. CenterOS

It is an operating system for data center management with a primary focus on hardware inventory. In addition to creating a data center map, rack and connection diagrams, a well-designed integrated system of server statuses facilitates the management of internal technical work.

Another great feature allows you to find and contact the right person related to a particular piece of equipment in a few clicks (this can be the owner, technician or manufacturer), which can be very useful in case of unforeseen situations.

Source Centeros is closed and prices are available on request only. The mystery of pricing makes it difficult to determine the target audience of the product, but one can assume that CenterOS is intended mainly for large companies.

11. LinMin

It is a tool for preparing physical equipment for further use. Uses PXE installation of the selected OS and subsequent deployment of the required set of additional software.

Unlike most analogues, LinMin has an advanced hard drive backup system, which speeds up recovery after failures and facilitates the mass deployment of servers with the same configuration.

The price starts from $2400/year for 100 servers. Medium and large companies can pay attention to LinMin.

12. Foreman

Foreman is the ultimate open source physical and virtual server lifecycle management application that gives Linux system administrators the ability to easily automate repetitive tasks, rapidly deploy applications, and proactively manage servers, local or cloud.

Conclusion

Now let's sum it up. I would say that most of the infrastructure-intensive operations automation products we have on the market today fall into two categories.

The first is mainly designed to prepare equipment for further operation, and the second manages the inventory. It's not easy to find a one-size-fits-all solution that will include all the features you need, so you can forego the many narrow-functionality tools provided by the equipment manufacturer.

However, now you have a list of such solutions, and you can check it yourself. It is worth noting that the list also includes open source products, so if you have a good developer, then it can be adapted to your specific needs.

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