Sunbird DCIM

Vorteile

The customer support is responsive and helpful through the process of tool adoption and migration. They were able to provide consultation on how to best address requirements of our internal processes and data needs. The cost model for the tool is simple and linearly scales with our hardware footprint.

Nachteile

At the time of this review, Sunbird DCIM is not available to be deployed as a containerized application which was not ideal for our on-premises usage. Sunbird DCIM does have a High Availability automated fail-over feature to provide some comparable benefits in terms of resiliency. Software that seeks to assist with the management and health of critical data center infrastructure should be up-to-date with the most modern software technology, particularly to address requirements of resiliency and performance.

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Gründe für den Wechsel zu Sunbird DCIM

Vorteile

Great products for managing data centers. Very active development investment. GREAT customer service!

Nachteile

No real issues with Sunbird. Would love to see some options for cost management / reporting.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

Warum Sunbird DCIM gewählt wurde

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Sunbird DCIM

Vorteile

Great product with a commitment to improving it in meaningful ways through direct Customer feedback. The Support Team are first class professionals and very pleasant to interact with.

Nachteile

Which the tool could do some targeted discovery. But I am hopeful that with future integration with AI tools it will get there.

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Gründe für den Wechsel zu Sunbird DCIM

Vorteile

New hardware devices are ready be monitored in seconds. Management of hundreds of hardware devices such PDUs and sensors lost it's complexity. PowerIQ superseded our Nagios Installation for all hardware-related devices. It becomes more and more our primary trap host.

Nachteile

Compared to PowerIQ setup of dcTrack is complex. Integration of PowerIQ an dcTrack could be easier to use. (License) Price for integration of USVs into PowerIQ is definitely to high, as a result we do not monitore our several USVs via PowerIQ

Vorteile

A truly complete and functional software. It is always evolving and updating

Nachteile

I have been using this software for a year and I have not found any negative points

Vorteile

The ease of use.
Visualization of the actual floor model and location of devices.
Support tickets are dealt with promptly.

Nachteile

Unknown at this time. Support, ease of use and helpful Support personal has made it an easy transition.

Vorteile

The tools logical ease of use and speed is very refreshing.

Nachteile

Licences being used for essentially pictures. To Sunbirds credit they are very willing to investigate being able implement something in a later release to resolve this. They were also very helpful in finding alternative methods to achieve what I wanted to.

Vorteile

The asset tracking, visualization, and power/temperature monitoring are the biggest features we need. My favorite thing about the product/company is how accessible management is to escalate issues and the support organization. You work with the customer and that sells the product to me.

Nachteile

We utilize tap cassettes at both data centers for our Corning patch panels. It would be awesome if we could trace both connections out of the tap cassettes, but that feature hasn't been integrated yet.

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Gründe für den Wechsel zu Sunbird DCIM

Vorteile

Very helpful troubleshooting error, doing trial and error situations

Nachteile

Nothing, I first try to watch the videos. If that doesn't help, I create a ticket.

Vorteile

Easy installation of the appliance, support for open source hypervisor, clean and intuitive web based interface.

Nachteile

The connectivity configuration is imposing too complicated rules and is predominantly NEMA-centric. It could use some changes to adapt better to IEC standards.

Vorteile

Since implementing dcTrack, Sunbird has consistently demonstrated its commitment to promptly addressing service tickets and effectively resolving issues. Additionally, the flexibility to submit requests for adding components not in their CMDB has made adapting dcTrack to our environment seamless. When you invest in this product, rest assured that you won’t be navigating the implementation alone.

Nachteile

To date, I have not found anything in particular that I would consider to be a con.

Vorteile

The ability to have a 3D rendering of the data centre as well as a good database

Nachteile

A few bugs when swapping over and updating on a few devices making us having to re enter them

Vorteile

Appreciate the design of the Sunbird and the fast react

Nachteile

integration with other app Excel for item

Vorteile

The application interface is very simple to use. Thanks to the constantly updated device list, all devices can be added and placed in their places in the cabinet. Apart from these, the datacenter structure can be displayed in 3d. In this way, capacity planning can be done on cabinet basis.

Nachteile

Sometimes problems can occur when removing cable connections.

Vorteile

Sunbird DCIM was easy to get installed and get started. There are many options available to track machines, and the dcTrack and PowerIQ work very well together. The tools can be setup with appropriate roles and authentication so that many members of a team can work with it and update it. Also, when I have had a problem, the support team was able to correct the issue and were very knowledgeable about the product so it did not take long to fix.

Nachteile

The software can be a bit confusing to get around until you use it for a while. There have been a few bugs, but the support team was able to get things sorted out for me.

Vorteile

What we like most about Sunbird's DCIM solution is the integration between dcTracks and PowerIQ along with the great features, detailed user interface and ease of use. The software is setup in a way that is very intuitive to use and just as easy to implement from image to production use. The implementation/proof of concept team was great to work with. The weekly sessions made sure we were able to achieve all our requirements and not only assisted in setting up the software but showed the team how accomplish the tasks on our own so that we could replicate and update our data as needed.

Nachteile

At this point there is not much that we dislike about the software. It contains all the features and ease of use we expected; and more. We would like an additional feature for integration with server cabinet door locks to see the status; if they were open/closed and who accessed the rack based on badge. The way the integration currently works is to send an alert when triggered but doesn't fully meet what we would like to accomplish.

Vorteile

Visualizations look great. The constant updating of model library helps to keep things accurate when adding new assets. Monitoring can be granular which gives the user better flexibility to use the functionality how they want it to be used. Software is very easy once it is used on a daily basis. Free weekly training is also helpful

Nachteile

Some of the better features appear to be available in newer builds. Newer builds require more testing before they can even be implemented. We get stuck using the outdated version with fear that the new one won't work well with out environment. Seems like the older versions have less and less support as the newer versions are released which is understandable. Charging for rack licenses for simple things like cable ladders to be represented in maps.

Vorteile

Import / export functionality along with the sort and filter. When setting up the power infrastructure, I like that it is a physical representation of the plugs to outlet in that a L22-30P needs to be plugged into an L22-30R and that the software understands that a different plug or receptacle wouldn't physically plug in. There are numerous checks and balances like this that are helpful.

Nachteile

The separation of features between the web client and classic view. It can also be confusing to understand what features are in PowerIQ opposed to DcTrack. Making them better integrated would be helpful. It would be nice if the models library updates were more proactive vs reactive. For example, when Dell released their Rx30 lineup, it would be nice to have the R330, R430, R530, etc.. automatically added without having to put in a request since Dell is such a big player in this field. I understand it can't be done for every make / model but for the big manufacturers core lineup that would help. Software doesn't natively work with Chrome, the use of extensions doesn't always work properly.

Vorteile

dcTrack is easy to use in that setting it up to model a data center follows the physical process of actually setting up a data center. Using it to maintain documentation of assets' placement, data and power connections is easy and logical. It also provides for great monitoring of power utilization and temperature/humidity with its integration with Power IQ. And the customer support is excellent! You are treated like a partner.

Nachteile

dcTrack is mostly web-based but part of the functionality remains in an application called Classic View. This functionality is being migrated piece by piece, and a lot of it is accessible now from the web client. We look forward to the day when we no longer need to use Classic View as it is quite slow and it cannot be re-sized to see all of it at once without scrolling.

Vorteile

Ease of workflow. Simple and intuitive and my team has been able to quickly pickup the process of using it with little direction. We appreciate Sunbird taking responsibility for maintaining a catalog of assets. We love the 3D visualization aspect and that we can spin the cabinet around and isolate cabinets.

Nachteile

The visualization maps are really rough to look at and often look like a high school drafting project from the 80's. I can create beautiful looking maps in Visio but importing them from Visio to a cad file, then importing them into dcTrack looks like garbage. Even using straight cad files could use improvement.

Vorteile

Leveraging Sunbird dcTrack and PowerIQ gives you a through solution for discovering what you have within your Data Centers and off site locations MDF/IDF's . Dashboard capability helps to provide a quick status on a location via an "At a glance" view.

Nachteile

Overall ease of use is good. Videos available to help walk you through situations. Area which I think needs to be expanded on is graph modifications and best practices would be nice or based on customer info top graphs to consider.

Vorteile

Product is easy to use and view when it is setup. Useful as we have multiple "teams" using Sunbird to look at assets on the floor and for future projects.

Nachteile

Most missing features are easy to request to get added and have a quick turn around response time.

Vorteile

The many visualizations such as device, cabinet and floor plan (including 3D) are quite valuable to me. With the cabinet views, I can 'see' the best areas to place equipment within a cabinet without the need to be physically on site. Device views allows me to 'show' Installers where exactly the various device ports are located so they connect data cables correctly. The floor plan allows me to estimate distances so I can order cables of proper length. All of these views are invaluable to me since I support remote data centers.

Nachteile

That I still need to access Classic View to preform some functions. To be able to access data panel port information from the GUI is great and I cannot wait for functions like Lists and Connectors are moved there too.

Vorteile

Ease of integration with Raritan (Legrand) PDUs a,d ability to monitor/alert down to outlets.

Nachteile

search function limitations, lack of custom fields

Vorteile

It was helping a lot in generating reports and monitoring the daily activities

Nachteile

It seems that App needs more technical improvement, I have missed SLDs hardware description in some items was incorrect

Vorteile

That's a difficult question, but I think pragmatically the asset management feature so that I know where my stuff is. So many features have been added over the years, but the original core asset manager is the most useful, and honestly indispensable for DC operators.

Nachteile

I know the product is not a BMS solution and likely never will be, but better integration with facilities items, including greater event handling and power info from HVAC and other facility items, would be a holy grail for me. Understanding the total health of my critical infrastructure, including events, statuses and equipment failures, from the floor map would be the "single pane of glass" that most DC operators are looking for.

Vorteile

Sunbird DCIM is definitely a leader in this space. Their product fits our enterprise very well. Service and Support are both excellent and willing to go the extra step to make issues are addressed.

Nachteile

I cannot honestly think of a con at the moment.

Vorteile

The Sunbird DCIM gave us the single source of truth to our data centers. Sunbird also integrated to our applications to automate asset information that eliminated manual errors. Customer service was always willing to help and available.

Nachteile

The effort to pick the correct make/models can be cleaned up. Picking the correct layouts and ports without having to do too much customization would be a great step.

Vorteile

I like the power management and being able to see what is in a cabinet without having to physically go to it, as well as trace cabling without having to do actual cable tracing.

Nachteile

There is a high learning curve. It becomes more logical over time once you get a good understanding of it.

Vorteile

Sunbird DCIM stands out for its proactive customer support and commitment to continuous improvement. Their support page is user-friendly and they regularly offer educational webinars. The team is highly responsive, providing immediate resolutions or timely follow-ups when necessary. They actively seek user feedback to enhance their product, demonstrating a genuine effort to cater to customer needs.

Nachteile

Having used Sunbird DCIM for nearly a year, I haven't encountered significant issues. However, the process of creating patched connections feels incomplete. It would be beneficial to have a function for editing node ports and visualizing racks within the connectivity tab. Additionally, a pathway suggestion/automation feature for selecting connection points would improve efficiency.

Vorteile

Plenty of Features and integrations with industry standard services

Nachteile

Some of the features are not as intuitive for certain level of users

Vorteile

Sunbird is great at being able to manage all assets that are parts, switches, servers, PDUs that are onsite, or decommissioned. It allows us to look up what a customer asks for and tell them exactly where it is or where it was.

Nachteile

When a model is wrong on an asset, we have to decommission it, change it, then re-install it. This process is more tedious than anything.

Vorteile

Visualization of the cabinets and hardware within the cabinets

Nachteile

Deployment of more number of devices across sites

Vorteile

- User friendly interface.
- Delivers all the key features that are essential to data center management.
- Knowledge base article with how-to videos in the support portal - Nice to have.

Nachteile

Nothing observed so far.

Vorteile

great support & solution.
comprehensive & fits our needs

Nachteile

its so comprehensive, it can be complex. practise practise practise & when in doubt contact support

Vorteile

In Verizon, we started using dcTrack, a Sunbird tool from 2020 and seeing it really helpful in our migration from the old legacy applications to this new dctrack tool. It has a lot more easy to use functionalities to migrate/ add data & realtime dashboards to view graphs/data. Also they provide new release versions every 4-6 months to add new features and fix bugs reported in the existing version.

Nachteile

As its a third party tool, we wont have direct access to their code base and DB, to fix any bug found during our implementation, rather have to create a ticket and they'll take a look at it and will release a hotfix for the existing version/ fix it in the next release version.

Vorteile

I only used PowerIQ. I liked the ease of setup and dashboard creation. I liked the sales team availability and help provided. The ease of which other team members were able to work with the product with no training and no documentation provided.

Nachteile

Sometimes extra work was needed to find special filters to apply. I had to create an IT device to filter plugs since that was not include in the associated PDU.

Vorteile

Seamless integration with Sunbird support

Nachteile

Not sure yet. I still need to evaluate the suitability of client reports and access to a client portal.

Vorteile

The ability to see all power usage at a facility and compare to the cooling capacity is an amazing feature.

Nachteile

Some features require multiple clicks to access/use.

Vorteile

Customizable Dashboards / Facility health and Asset and part management.

Nachteile

No dislikes yet, the system has been great.

Vorteile

Great support both during our POC and from the support team now we are fully onboarded

Nachteile

Further work that could be completed on the network physical layer

Vorteile

I have been working with Sunbird Products for many years. Started with PowerIQ 11 years ago and recently migrated from Aperture to dcTrack.

Starting with PowerIQ I have to say I love the Buffered Data Retrieval feature that provides a min, avg and max reading from a timestamp sample you define. This has proven to be very useful data.

PowerIQ also has a Sensors Tab that I'm happy to say I submitted the NFR for. This tab allows users to easily manage their Temperature Sensors, providing the ability to utilize Global or Local Thresholds. Recently the addition of Inlets and Circuit Breakers have been added to this Tab.

dcTrack has a lot of great features but the best feature by far is the Auto Power Budget Feature. This too I worked with Sunbird to create. It provides Deployment and Facilities Engineers with a Potential Power Load that is based off of Trend Policies defined by the Users. In my opinion it provides the most realistic power consumption from your devices on the Market. If you have not seen this in action you should contact Sunbird for a Demonstration right away.

As it pertains to Support, Sunbird is remarkable! They respond to all Tickets in a timely manner and work hard to resolve them.

Nachteile

With all the great features Sunbird provides, the one thing I have an issue with is all the bugs we find after a new version is released. Although they are quick to resolve them there are far too many. I would like to see them beef up their Quality Assurance Program.

Vorteile

The Visualization of my datacenter floor. i find myself in it all day going cabinet to cabinet. This portion of the tool gives you 3d CAD rendering of your datacenter that you can quickly click on a cabinet and take you to the device you are looking for. This feature also is very useful is seeing cabinet temps, power usage when paired with smart PDU's oh and one of my all time favorite features in this Visualization feature is the ability to measure out cable. You can click on measure in the menu and then click a point on your datacenter map then trace out where your cable will run and go point to point. It gives you an accurate distance so you know which cable lengths you will be using. Just one of the many various useful elements of dcTrack.

Nachteile

I do not have many issues or complaints with regard to dcTrack. The issues I do come across tend to be buggy new release issues that once called into the Sunbird Support Team, it's handled and rectified quickly. For example there was an issue with having to load up Adobe Flash when opening a certain tab in the software. The issue was isolated to this one tab and only when using Chrome did it come up. The Sunbird team was quick to correct this and on the next software update release, it was addressed.

Vorteile

The product is very easy to use, and also train new employees how to use it.

Nachteile

I can't think of any Cons for this product.

Vorteile

dcTrack, along with powerIQ provides in-depth health-concern data for your data centers, at a glance. I dont' have enough characters here to list everything I like about this software. I'll sum it up like this, all of the questions/requirements you may have for your system, that start with, "can I do ______ with this system?", the answer is yes. Some features are harder than others to get setup. Power connectivity, for instance, takes into account your building's entire power chain. From the building UPS, up to your rack PDU's, utilizing any available management information those devices will offer up. Unless you know a lot about industrial power (I do not) then it could be a difficult feature to get working. That being said I was able to get things up and running with a Sunbird support staff who are not just extremely knowledgeable of their applications, but have expertise in every facet of every infrastructure area that the system supports.

The applications are also visually stunning that they are easy sells to management and are "no-brianers" to justify for purchase.

Nachteile

My biggest complaint about the software is a development paradigm of dictating what can be done or not in the system, even if you may feel like you should be able to proceed with an operation. An example of this is that the system, when implemented as deigned will not allow you to make a network connection between a SFP port of a switch and a copper NIC. This, even though these connections are possible using copper GBIC's. There is a workaround for this, of making all of your different port-types to "twisted-pair" which constitutes a minor inconvenience.

The important thing is that the Sunbird Support staff have always come up with a work around for the particular incompatibilities in our environment, of which there have not been many.

Vorteile

The software provides a rich end to end functional journey of creating a DC room, adding the power train, then the racks and finally the devices into those racks. In the process of doing this you get a visualization view and an asset list plus how it all logically & physically connects together. Plus great out of the box dashboards.

Nachteile

None from a product perspective, but it does require you to understand all the layers within your data Centre and the equipment makes and models plus specifications.

Vorteile

Features, data and asset management is easy to use and when you have an issue your calling the leaders of the industry. Support is crucial to resolving any issues right away, not 5 to 10 days like others.

Nachteile

Reports could be a little more detailed in my opinion.

Vorteile

Features, ease of deployment with some reservations to importing assets and setting up a db, overall look and feel, automation, precision and wide scope of functionality.

Nachteile

The process of getting your existing assets in is quite gruelling if you are not using Service Now as your asset management system. Collating and matching data to dcTracks standards is very challenging for the project team. We are going to use your turn key service to ease the process.

Vorteile

When purchasing a DCIM tool we felt that PowerIQ gave us the ability to accomplish everything it was that we needed to do. This tool has provided us with such visibility into our data center environments wherever they may be. We felt this was the best tool on the market for the price with what are needs were.

Nachteile

As of right now I have found nothing that I don't like about the product.

Vorteile

Ease of use and navigation within the tool. The screens flow with all the information needed to perform any task.

Nachteile

N/A - haven't found anything bad within the tool