Simplifying Operations: Managing Edge Data Centers

IT professionals have been honing their data center management expertise for decades. However, migrating these best practices to an edge computing environment can be challenging.

That’s because many workers located in edge environments, such as retail store clerks, lack the necessary data center expertise to ensure edge sites are properly maintained. Complicating matters is the fact that edge data centers can be expensive and complex to run.

Clearly, organizations need a new way forward. Fortunately, cloud-based platforms are designed for the edge, and can simplify remote monitoring and management. Here’s what every business should look for in a solution:

Real-time monitoring: Without monitoring, there’s no benchmark for improving data center capacity and resources. The good news is the right IT infrastructure management software can enable remote administrators to monitor a current data center operating environment. All monitoring needs are brought together under one central dashboard, providing critical data center performance details like temperature, humidity, and available battery runtime. This ensures issues are spotted, prevented, and corrected before they escalate, thereby minimizing risks. 

Predictive powers: Unforeseen downtime can cost companies in lost productivity, legal liabilities, regulatory violations, and consumer distrust. Luckily, a cloud-based platform with predictive maintenance capabilities can deliver a new level of system and component monitoring. Parts that are flagged for replacement can be handled off-hours, preventing unplanned downtime which can occur during routine maintenance procedures.

One-stop shopping: Administrators constantly face the challenge of having to make daily technology changes and support the latest equipment while staying within the original data center design specifications. A one-stop shop solution can address this issue by combining infrastructure with IT management. This centralized approach not only saves users from having to manage multiple individual solutions, but provides a big picture view of the location of IT equipment such as servers, storage, and network devices.

Access to experts: Access to a team of on-call technical experts can save users from having to call tech support to dispatch a technician. Instead, these representatives already know the serial number of the unit, and the company’s contact information. Better yet, they’re empowered with real-time data, enabling them to respond quickly to data center issues for significant time saving.

A clear picture: Today’s administrators simply don’t have time to painstakingly search for data center details. Fortunately, easy-to-access visualizations can display the current status of data center performance, and quickly assess activity and equipment behavior over the last 24 hours for faster responses times and greater peace of mind. Such visualizations are particularly useful to today’s remote workers, many of whom must connect to a private network from the road to access the necessary information. With easy access to powerful dashboards, though, off hours monitoring and troubleshooting can take minutes, not hours.

Managing edge data centers is critical to maintaining application uptime and data integrity. Fortunately, by simplifying management activities, organizations can ensure a high level of resiliency without the guesswork and time-consuming troubleshooting.

To find out how the EcoStruxure™ enabled suite of products can help simplify your data center management and monitoring efforts, visit APC.com.