These days technology architects are truly getting excited at the potential of hyperscale data centers. They can build technical masterpieces of limitless scale, which can be connected in many ways, and be manipulated or repurposed to serve multiple functions.
Granted, these engineers aren’t building robots, dinosaurs or spaceships. Better yet – they are deploying the foundations to support business functions like product development, human capital management, or applications which stream movies about robots, dinosaurs and spaceships to millions of people around the world.
The type of structured data or unstructured content which a hyperscale data center supports varies from business to business. There are, however, common needs for faster delivery, tighter security, and rock-solid reliability for any enterprise that needs the sort of capacity only a Hyperscale Service framework can deliver.
From our experience, here are the top five reasons to invest in a hyperscale data center to meet your growing business information management needs.
1. Remote Technical Support
With traditional data centers, complex issues frequently often require an onsite support engineer (or a few) to assist a company’s technical staff through implementations, upgrades or extended maintenance work. The evolution of software-defined data centers, virtualization and hyperscale services has enabled companies to leverage remote support services, as opposed to the expense of onsite consultants.
A collaborative effort between your technical staff and a knowledgeable Remote Technical Support (RTS) resource is an investment which will pay short and long term dividends. The assistance of Level I and II support technicians during deployment, operation and expansion phases provides your staff with peace of mind and mitigates the likelihood of errors along the way. Collaborative screen sharing sessions can help pinpoint any causes of unexpected behaviors.
Contracting RTS assistance speeds problem determination in concert with knowledge base documentation and remote troubleshooting capabilities. If your company is used to running its own physical and virtual servers, but need occasional remote assistance, these services can ensure your technical team meets their project goals and can move to other strategic technology initiatives.
2. Supply chain/parts support
The broad adoption of hyperscale, virtual and high-performance data centers has created added pressure on the suppliers of components and supportive technology for cooling, power, and connectivity. These sorts of services are ideally suited to hyperscale environments due to rapid growth trajectories of data centers which support data-driven enterprises.
Instead of ordering excessive amounts of hardware and components you may never use, partner with an Independent Service Organization that offers supply chain services. Ensure the ISO supports many enterprise and mid-tier hyperscale, grid computing and IT as a Service customers, as it’s a good way to ensure the parts you need will be on hand when you need them, or they can be procured and delivered quickly. The service provider can manage relationships with suppliers and keep apprised of inventory levels, while you focus on sustaining your company’s data and content management needs.
Similar to having your own data center parts desk, contracting supply chain and parts advisory services is great way to optimize the hardware you have, and buy only what you need to scale up and out.
3. Parts management for self-maintainers
Although much of the credit for the scalability, reliability and extensibility of hyperscale data centers goes to virtualization software and other infrastructure applications,hardware still needs to be installed, upgraded, replaced and repaired to sustain incremental growth. When you need to add a white box server or other part to build out your clusters, being short a part can cause measurable performance loss or delayed projects.
Ensure the ISO supports many enterprise and mid-tier hyperscale, grid computing and IT as a Service customers, as it’s a good way to ensure the parts you need will be on hand when you need them, or they can be procured and delivered quickly. The consultant can advise your engineers on the best OEM and ODM components to address the specific technical objective. Effective parts management services ensure the right products are installed, and any defective parts are returned to the manufacturer or disposed of properly.
Maintech parts support and management services follow consistent and efficient process workflows, ensuring predictable outcomes with a high quality of service. Requests through our self-service portal or over the phone are routed through a defined dispatch process, as represented in the diagram below.
4. Efficient, consistent process workflow with predictable outcomes
The rapid growth of hyperscale data centers calls for support and service methodologies which follow a formal methodology for quality assurance. These workflows can be tailored to ensure client’s specific requirements are managed where customization may be needed. This closed-loop process ensures clients are only invoiced for the parts and services they use. It also ensures satisfaction. Support tickets and services requests are reviewed to ensure successful resolution, and to add helpful content to our support knowledgebase for self-maintainers.
5. Lowered expenses & fees through idle cycle reduction, task automation, and resource monitoring
Businesses that implement hyperscale data centers can schedule and automate tasks to take place when it is most convenient. Automated tasks include:
- Capacity scaling
- Horizontal Autoscale (additional servers or scaling in/out)
- Vertical Autoscale (additional CPU/RAM or scaling up/down)
- Virtual server maintenance
- Database acceleration/deceleration to respond to peaks and valleys in demand
- Turning off development environment machines over weekends
- Archiving or deleting unused servers at the end of a project
- Spinning down virtual resources which aren’t being used, where it is feasible
Resource monitoring is helpful to ensure you have the right capacity based on utilization, so you can scale hardware and virtual resources as needed. Dele these services to an ISO is a great way to free up your IT staff, and optimize your data center services Return on Investment.
To learn more about how Maintech’s Hyperscale Support Framework can reduce your service cost and improve your operational effectiveness, please contact your Maintech Team.