Covid-19 has spread across the world like a storm. It has brought up several issues which most of us have never faced before. How is your industry affected by the changing economy due to covid-19? Has your company made amendments in your business continuity plans to tackle another pandemic? In data centers, IT professionals might have dealt with multiple issues. However, they might not have dealt with a pandemic like covid-19 before. Most industries got impacted by the ongoing spread of the virus. Let’s discuss the IT and related business issues faced by Data Centers due to Covid-19 and how they have evolved post-pandemic.
1. Changes in customer requirements:
There was a significant increase in customers demanding their requirements since the pandemic started. So the companies had to mobilize very quickly. Those who could work remotely started to work from home immediately. And those who were not essential in the administrative team of the data center activities were removed to keep data centers pristine. Since inventory in some locations increased, few projects got accelerated. Since companies took a modular approach, some inventory modules were easily and soon brought into effective action. It provided more capacity to the customers, who had high demands.
2. Capacity unpredictability:
At first, most customers and even the data center staff did not know or understand how much capacity would be required. The big players scooped up the entire available inventory while smaller players try hard to get the capacity needed on time. Some customers demand the capacity reservation, post-pandemic. To deal with capacity unpredictability, they ask for double or triple the capacity amount they need to buy.
3. Cyber Security Issues:
Reports track cybercrime activity since the start of the covid-19 outbreak. The monthly volumes of spam and opportunistic cybercrime detections have increased. Fraud detections, malware detections, and the blocking of URL click also increased. In addition, pandemic-related spoof domains designed to steal personal information are being found.
How companies operate during this crisis:
The pandemic has also brought changes in how companies operate during a crisis. Companies had to revise their operating model to incorporate the following:
- Improvement in health and safety facilities
- Increased support for mobile and remote working
- Additional requirements to run business processes and functions
- Improvements in cyber-security arrangements
- Migration to pay-per-use commercial models
The pandemic has illuminated the ability to work effectively from remote locations and use public cloud services. Most companies that use private clouds have begun using public cloud services. Many data centers have hired remote workers for the better management of their cloud infra. SupportSages is a Managed Service provider with an expert team having a combined experience of over 150 years. We help manage Private, Public, and Hybrid cloud infrastructure.
Private cloud: Provides services to an internal network within the organization through a proprietary architecture using on-premises hardware. It delivers scalability and self-service.
Public cloud: Makes the resources available to the general public over the internet. It delivers the same services to multiple organizations.
Hybrid cloud: Combines an on-premises data center with one or more public cloud services, allowing sharing of data and applications between them. When computing and processing demand increases beyond on-premises datacenter capabilities, businesses can use the cloud to instantly scale up or down the capacity to handle excess capacity. It also allows avoiding the time and cost to purchase, install, and maintain new servers that they may not always need. A hybrid cloud environment helped to overcome capacity unpredictability post-pandemic.
For instance, AWS Direct Connect is a cloud service solution that makes it easy to establish a dedicated network connection from your premises to AWS in a single click.
Monitoring Tools and DCIM:
It is necessary to provide a designated infrastructure in an operated data center. Those who work remotely need planning resources, business information, and good monitoring tools and Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) like ManageEngine OpManager, PRTG NetworkMonitor, Nagios, ITRS OP5 Monitor, Zabbix, Icinga, etc.
DCIM provides remote control/automation that involves system review, security, and processes. It will assign, turn on and set up the purchased server and install the OS on the machine automatically.
It helps customers to prevent downtime, manage equipment from multiple vendors and deal with a large number of sites with limited or no staff.
It helps in disaster recovery and managing abuse by role-based access permissions and auditing reports which help to protect data centers against internal staff and employees.
Outsourcing data center hosting and management:
Datacenter hosting enables the use of the same services, features, and capabilities of a data center but from a hosted platform external to the on-premises data center or IT infrastructure. The data and applications could migrate from the existing data center to the hosted data center. It needs technical expertise in planning and executing server migrations with minimum post-migration issues without affecting your valuable uptime and data.
Outsourcing data center hosting and management is predominantly becoming a practice among the companies post-pandemic. Outsourcing data center management to a service provider brings various associated services such as managing bandwidth, network infrastructure, server space, and storage space.
Monitoring tools will monitor and manage data center utilization and energy consumption of all IT equipment (such as servers, storage, and network switches) and supporting infrastructures such as power and cooling systems. They also provide network ports, network switches, machine IP, and other details of the machines in the hosted data center. So customers can manage the server remotely from any connected device. By using just a single tool to control your entire business and infrastructure, you will save a lot of time and effort.
Suppose there is a need for OS re-installation or hard disk recovery in any of the machines in the hosted data center. Experts can manage this by an automatic system reboot using single clicks from the monitoring tools.
We discussed the changing requirements of DCs and how they have evolved post-pandemic. As an infra management company, SupportSages helps in remotely managing your data center quickly and effectively. We have good industry experience and the necessary technical and domain expertise in outsourcing your data center hosting. We make sure to deliver best-in-class technology services using proper monitoring tools at the lowest price point.
SupportSages will provide Service Level Agreements that are specific and measurable. We could provide clauses concerning breach of contract and details regarding procedures for monitoring the performance of the services. We have the expertise to meet the quality, availability, responsibilities of the service.
We offer support around the globe but some of our services are prominent in countries like the USA, UK, UAE, Germany, France, Ghana, etc. Over the years, we have come across multiple vendors who aim at managing and securing their infrastructure. We are happy to be their infrastructure partners today and aspire to be your partner tomorrow.
