Reliability is the watchword for CIOs and IT administrators the world over, especially in our age of hypoconnectivity and customer experience. Any downtime, regardless of how brief it is, can only annoy customers or push shoppers to competitors.
Yet the popularity of hybrid IT deployments can make for complex environments that span multiple locations. They can range from a single cabinet at one location to multiple racks housing mission-critical systems at another. Given that they are all important, how can organisations keep their entire IT infrastructure running smoothly?
Keeping Data Centre Operations Running
The first step to the smooth running of the data centre would be to ensure adequate visibility of the entire infrastructure. Aside from keeping a constant watch over the physical environment, organisations can also gain actionable insights and remote remediation into individual systems as necessary.
The situation can be addressed with the implementation of a data centre infrastructure management (DCIM) solution for greater visibility into the inner workings of the data centre. The enhanced clarity serves not just to increase efficiency, but also allows organisations to better manage equipment or to rectify impending faults before systems fail.
Moreover, a good DCIM makes it possible to take the guesswork out of how new and existing systems might interact. Instead of reacting to alarms all the time, the IT team or data centre managers can now model the management of their facilities using software and analytics. They can also predictively schedule maintenance, or plan for future capacity changes and upgrades.
But how does a DCIM address today’s complex, geographically disparate deployments? This is possible with as-a-service offerings such as EcoStruxure IT software solutions and EcoStruxure Asset Advisor service that are available from Schneider Electric.
A Swiss Data Centre Run Like Clockwork
One of our customers is a luxury-goods company in Switzerland, with a business that supports some of the top watch brands in the country. The Swiss are known for their tradition of craftsmanship and strong work ethics, with a strong dose of perfectionism that culminates in the vaunted Swiss quality. As you can imagine, they have very high expectations about the reliability and uptime of their data centres and IT infrastructure.
In this case, they have a large data centre with multiple distributed, remote IT facilities. The customer needed to monitor and control their geographically diverse infrastructure remotely. Understandably, they are not keen having to hire a team of dedicated technicians simply to perform the occasional data centre service and maintenance.
Here, the customer turned to EcoStruxure Asset Advisor for around-the-clock monitoring of their infrastructure. With trained personnel constantly on standby to remotely troubleshoot issues, the customer was able to set their minds at ease. What’s more, a field service technician armed with the requisite knowledge and equipment can be dispatched to perform routine or proactive maintenance as necessary, ensuring minimum downtime.
While some are like the Swiss company and form a partnership with experts to ensure the reliability of all their IT facilities, others are looking for a way to do it themselves. EcoStruxure IT Expert, for monitoring and management, and EcoStruxure IT Advisor, for planning and modelling, are Schneider Electric’s next-generation DCIM solutions that provide IT teams with global visibility and instant insights for proactive management and optimization of data centres and IT infrastructures.
The collective Schneider Electric EcoStruxure IT software and services application can be deployed your way and scaled according to the number of devices and the number of locations to be monitored and controlled. The result? Reliable and secure data centres, and the benefit of a good night’s rest while experts keep a watchful eye on operations.
Article by Gay Chi Sen, Head of Data Centre Software Solutions, APJ & EMEA, Schneider Electric
