iTRACS: A Digital Twin Solution for Data Center Environments

You may have seen this term, “digital twin”, around a lot lately. What exactly is a digital twin and how is it related to data center management? A digital twin is simply a digital representation of a real-world asset which contains meta data that describes the asset. Data centers are particularly well suited to utilizing digital twins.

In a data center environment, digital twins can be used to monitor the status of every asset in the facility, from the utility to the individual servers within cabinets. This can be beneficial for gaining a holistic view of the data center and allowing data-driven decisions to be made about power, connectivity, and the overall health of the facility.

Digital twins can be useful scenario planning tools, for example, running a power failure simulation. That is, what will happen if this piece of equipment over here fails? What else is affected in the data center? Will your critical IT equipment be able to survive a power failure? These are all important questions to consider before an actual power outage occurs.

Another way digital twins are useful is that they allow improved collaboration between teams. One team may test and plan a change entirely in the software and then provide the field teams with detailed visualizations and reports to accomplish the task in person. This way, there is no miscommunication between what has been planned and what gets installed on the floor.

iTRACS is a digital twin! What do we mean when we say iTRACS is a digital twin? We mean that iTRACS provides a full three-dimensional recreation of your environment. From the building to every port on every asset, the connectivity between those assets, documentation of every data point you care about, and finally a hub that can tie disparate systems together. Every asset has a story to tell. Find out how iTRACS Data Manager (DM) and iTRACS Converged Infrastructure (CI) can help you uncover that story.