Imagine being given
a tight-sealed container and being instructed to guard the package with your
life. Clueless of what’s inside, how could you possibly protect it? Without
knowing whether the contents can be damaged by any number of forces, be it
movement, noise, heat, or changes in atmospheric conditions, you simply will
have no way of knowing how to protect what’s inside. The same dilemma is
experienced by many data centers.
This may be
hard to believe, but many IT heads usually have little to no idea what’s going
on within their data centers. Take Cisco, a leading IT company for instance.
Out of their 800,000 customers, they believe that less than 1 percent of them
know or have a quick view of their system processes and what these systems are
doing—no one has meaningful visibility into the inner workings of the data center.
This ignorance is often a result of IT heads quickly filling up their data
centers with all kinds of programs and software from different users once their
storage assets are on. There is often very little control over the said
process, not to mention the complexities that merging on-premise assets with
cloud-based hardware creates.
Not knowing
exactly what’s going on across these data landscapes can make it extremely
difficult to secure them and even more worrying, what could happen should a
breach occur. Fortunately, there are systems in place for IT heads to get a
best view into data centers, among which is CMDBs or Change Management
Databases. These databases contain all known details and information about a
data center’s hardware and software. However, CMDBs only give users but a
partial view of a data center’s inner workings, which is why more robust
systems must be out in place to help IT heads and professionals see into
exactly what’s going on within their data center.
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