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Data centers are undertaking initiatives to improve data center infrastructure management (DCIM).  They still lack the insight to improve availability, enhance efficiency and manage capacity, according to an Emerson (News - Alert) Network Power survey.

Primary challenges preventing the survey respondents from optimizing data center performance include lack of visibility into system utilization, absence of documented efficiency strategies and lack of functionality within management systems.

“If you compare managing a data center to flying an airplane, what we are seeing now is that organizations are no longer willing to fly without instruments—as they have done for the past twenty years—but have not quite reached the point of automation,” said Blake Carlson, vice president of global IT markets, Avocent (News - Alert) business of Emerson Network Power, in a statement.

Majority data centers use virtualization. Only eight percent had not virtualized at least some of their servers. Forty four percent of respondents are still expecting the number of physical servers in their primary data center to increase over the next three years. Two percent said all servers in the data center will be virtualized in the next three years.

According to the survey, 65 percent are using less than 70 percent of their computing capacity. Fifty seven percent plans to add new servers in the next three years, and 20 percent plans to add capacity by leasing additional space from a co-location or hosting facility, according to the survey conducted by Emerson Network Power among more than 240 U.S. data center professionals from a variety of industries.

The most commonly used management tools were facility monitoring (65 percent), equipment tracking (54 percent), and cooling management (53 percent). Tracking virtual machines and their dependencies on underlying hardware (28 percent) and IT capacity management (27 percent) were among the least used management tools.

Recently, Emerson Network Power announced that its Avocent Data Center Planner management software has significantly improved ARRIS Group data center management capabilities by offering enhanced visualization, insight and management capabilities into ARRIS’ data center infrastructure.