In a rapidly virtualizing data center environment, what do we need to label and how do we meaningfully label things? If you are running a data center, you know that you still must label the physical objects, but how you do it will have to change with the changing face of data center operations.

Anyone who has run a data center knows the problems with cable, switch, and server labeling: it gets out of sync with reality. Many label plants, if you’ll allow the construction, were only accurate for as long as it took to get from go-live to the first change event.

Truly meaningful labels, such as “this switch port serves that server,” became very difficult to maintain even before the advent of virtual servers, as the re-purposing of servers and mobility of applications became prevalent. Less meaningful labels, such as “this switch port goes to that patch-panel port” are hardier but less helpful in rapid troubleshooting situations.

The accuracy of server labeling is also notorious for how quickly it becomes completely inaccurate or - and this may be worse - partially accurate, as what users see as IT services continue to evolve into interoperating components on many servers.

There’s good software out there for tracking physical assets, but the key weakness in all of it is that it either requires physical input by data center techs to stay up to date, or relies on automated tools for discovering port information. Such tools cannot collect any information about the passive components of the infrastructure - the cables and patch panels! Also, they cannot automatically re-label a server or a rack to reflect what they are doing this year (in a slow-changing, manually managed environment) or this week (in a fast-changing one), let alone what they are doing today (in a fast-changing, automated-provisioning environment) or even right this minute (in a fully virtualized milieu).

Yet we still retain a very real need to reach down to this most basic layer of the infrastructure and know where the traffic is really flowing, what is actually on a box on which we are seeing warning lights.

The answer might be in the creation of “semi-active” infrastructure and a new standard for “semi-active” labeling on servers and racks. Consider the utility of a patch panel infrastructure that could, on demand, switch its ports from passive to active connections, determine which ports on each were connected to which devices or which other patch panel ports, and then revert to passive mode.