A data center facility is typically comprised of highly advanced IT equipment, support equipment or infrastructure, and personnel. Conventional features include a redundant power and cooling infrastructure. Security is also a matter of great concern to the owners of data centers due to the nature of the data that their facilities store.
While these things are very important, data centers cannot function without the presence of a trained IT staff. Servers and other similar types of equipment are notorious in terms of consistent hardware and software malfunctions. Without the presence of trained IT professionals, these problems would never be solved. This would result in potentially devastating server downtime. Since companies need to remain in constant communications with their data centers, any downtime can result in considerable losses. Consequently, IT professionals that service an entire data center play an important role.
What has Changed?
Nowadays, running data centers has become easier due to virtualization and remote management strategies. Only a handful of trained professionals are required to remain onsite. The IT staff at a data center facility needs to be trained and employed full time. So, companies can end up saving a lot of money by cutting down on the number of such employees through remote management.
What is Remote Management?
Remote management allows users to control certain types of equipment in another location via a high-speed Internet connection. Therefore, a person does not have to be present physically at the location of the equipment to monitor its performance.
A lot of companies have invested in building remote management structures within offshore countries. Trained professionals based in other countries monitor the performance of equipment within data centers. This has allowed many companies to save on staffing costs.
However, this does not mean that a data center will continue operating without any personnel at all. Servers and remote management consoles require power to be continuously running and available. Therefore, personnel are still present at data centers to ensure the cooling and power infrastructure continues to function properly.
Also hardware issues cannot be solved via remote management. The user remotely monitoring the data center will be able to pinpoint the exact issues. However, onsite personnel will be required to patch up the problem. These problems can and do arise at any time. Because of this quality data centers will employ live staff 24/7/365. No matter the time of day or day of the week, even if it is a holiday, these personnel can attend to problems immediately.
When IT equipment is monitored remotely from offshore, some of those countries might not have reliable power networks. Or, at the least, they are not as reliable as that of the United States. That is why considerable investment has to be made in making sure that the remote management facility will not go offline. On the plus side, the costs of setting up data centers are considerably lower in such countries.
Therefore, remote management is a smart option for enterprises looking to cut down on IT associated costs. They can do this without having to do away with their data centers completely.
Kale Burns believes there are many factors to consider when evaluating the cost of data centers. His articles educate readers about the features that set different data centers apart. Learning how those features dramatically impact cost allows readers to determine whether the provider is worth the price.