Fujitsu is standardising on Infrastructure Manager (ISM) as the standard for monitoring and managing entire IT landscapes, taking a step towards the software-defined data center.

ISM provides seamless, holistic management ensuring that IT infrastructures retain the dynamic flexibility required to support ever-changing business demands.

Today, many IT landscapes are a complex combination of legacy systems and state-of-the-art technology, making the essential task of monitoring and management ever more complex and time-consuming.

ISM tackles this by providing holistic, single pane of glass management for entire data centers including Fujitsu Primergy servers, Fujitsu Eternus and NetApp storage, selected Cisco and Extreme Network switches, and power and cooling systems, and monitoring the status of almost any other data centre system.

Thanks to these capabilities, Fujitsu is establishing ISM as its new standard management suite for data center infrastructure. Fujitsu will continue to update its previous server management software, ServerView, until April 2021 and will support ServerView until 2026.

Fujitsu ISM unlocks simplified data center lifecycle management, enabling the holistic management of entire environments. Its remote management capabilities avoid the need for middle-of-the-night trips to a remote data centre.

A powerful new compliance feature built into Fujitsu ISM allows monitoring of system parameters across a data center, node by node – and the ability to roll back any unauthorised changes made on-site. This helps prevent unplanned downtime due to human error in reconfiguring systems during standard maintenance, for example.

Updating all nodes with one action, ISM can reduce the cost and time of firmware update management by up to 90%. ISM also introduces automated node-by-node rolling updates for VMware clusters, simplifying a laborious and time-consuming process.

Users also report significant reductions in the time required to troubleshoot unexpected problems across data center landscapes. ISM helps drive down overall power consumption, by identifying overloaded or power-hogging systems.

Christian Leutner, head of product sales Europe at Fujitsu, comments: “For most businesses today, the data center is the heart of their operations. When effectively managed, the data center underpins all other digital transformation initiatives.

“However, in the race to remain competitive in today’s digital economy, many organizations have ended up with increasingly complex IT environments that are extremely challenging to manage.

“Whether their objective is simply to provide enhanced oversight and efficiency, or to make the move to a fully software-defined data center, the holistic approach of Fujitsu ISM helps customers effectively leverage entire data centers to make better decisions, connect with customers, and drive new sources of revenue.”

Two versions of Fujitsu ISM are available. ISM Advanced is a powerful, fully featured version designed for organizations moving towards SDDC implementation. This offers comprehensive infrastructure management capabilities such as support for multiple hardware configurations, physical and virtual network connection indicators and firmware baseline updates.

It is compatible with third party devices and easily integrates with VMware, Microsoft System Center, and Ansible environments. A free entry-level version, ISM Essential, provides essential monitoring and firmware update of all supported devices, including servers, storage and network switches.