Making your data center run efficiently is a top priority for your IT administrators. But what happens if a request for changes or additions to running applications comes in from an area of business? In most current data centers, IT administrators must take time away from more important projects to manually move resources around to accommodate these requests. And if storage and other resources had been previously set aside to accommodate fluctuation in business demand, a percentage of your data center is always underutilized – and this can continue to add up.
Since 2010, Dell has offered Advanced Infrastructure Manager (AIM) as a rapid workload mobility and recovery management solution that works across heterogeneous, physical and virtual data centers. In this Q&A with Aaron Prince and Consuelo Ortiz, part of the Dell Virtualization Solutions marketing team, they discuss how Dell is continuing to enhance AIM’s dynamic provisioning impact and expand on other features with today’s release of Dell AIM 3.4.2.
Q: Since its initial release, how has the solution evolved?
A. AIM has focused on becoming more scalable and flexible as it has evolved from release to release. We now share all of the functionality that is in our own console through web service APIs to allow other software and tools to interact with AIM. Our own console has also been evolving to scale to larger environments and be simpler and more intuitive to interact with. And as always, we have been adding support for a wide range of multi-vendor hardware to make sure AIM stays heterogeneous in the infrastructure it supports.
Q: For the global community, what makes this particular release important?
A: The most significant new feature in AIM 3.4.2 for the global community is localization of the AIM console. Now, AIM users will be able to work with the AIM console localized into French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese and Simplified Chinese.
Q: One of the key differentiators for Dell Virtual Integrated System (VIS), of which AIM is a key part, is its ability to work in multi-vendor data centers. How does Dell AIM continue and expand on partnerships?
A: Most recently, Dell released AIM integration packs for Microsoft System Center Orchestrator and BMC Atrium Orchestrator. These integration packs make AIM an integral part of both management ecosystems and allow customers to create run books, which contain instructions for automated tasks or processes, that bring all of the great AIM functionality into their existing tools and processes. A run book can be triggering AIM functionality while logging all of the changes, updating databases and sending emails or filing trouble tickets automatically. This extends the benefits of AIM as well as makes it easily fit into your compliance and logging requirements.
Q: With the industry moving toward public, private and hybrid clouds, how does AIM help businesses create and manage their cloud?
A: AIM helps build a private cloud in a customer’s existing infrastructure, as well as keeps adding value as they grow their environment. We work with multiple vendors of server, storage, networking and hypervisors to build a private cloud that is built with best of breed components and avoids vendor lock in. Having a multi-vendor infrastructure, that is also a mixture of physical and virtual, gives a customer a flexible and powerful cloud that can adapt to changing business needs and make sure the right workload is running in the right place.
Q: With all these enhancements, what characteristics will AIM maintain?
A: AIM will always maintain its focus on being open, flexible and heterogeneous. We work with standard protocols in our communication with the infrastructure being managed, allowing a best of breed heterogeneous environment that meets customer needs. We also allow many configuration options to customize how AIM is configured to ensure that it is always functioning the way that the customer needs it to be, and not dictating how it must be used.
Links
- For more information, visit dell.com/aim
- To learn more about other VIS solutions, visit dell.com/vis
- Learn in this two-minute video how Dell AIM can pool and provision your resources:
