One cannot stop dealing with the Data centers in the with the coronavirus crisis. Read on to know more about it…
For several organizations, last few months has been spent figuring out the best way to get teams comfortable working from home. But not everyone involved with technology can carry on doing their jobs remotely, and that includes the workers who are keeping the digital world turning by keeping data centers up and running.
While the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns continue, all of us are more reliant on online services to work. While it is easy to talk about all these services living in the cloud, they also have a more prosaic physical existence. Data centers typically come across as large, industrial, warehouse-like boxes; but few are aware of the fact that they are also the buildings that are keeping us connected, working and entertained.
Minimizing Downtime
Maintaining uptime with regards to IT assets and regular operations requires various steps in the current environment. Enterprises with IT asset management control will be more equipped to to maintain stable IT operations given their ability to have a complete IT inventory that facilitates asset tracking, thereby enabling more control over the company’s IT environment.
Ground Reality
The ground reality is that there will be disruptions to IT operations in the data centres during this pandemic. Given that there are widespread and strict travel restrictions, last-mile IT field engineers could be face challenges such as being denied access to critical facilities that they typically monitor. Moreover, even if they can get to a customer location, physical access to customer premises to resolve hardware faults in the data centre — like switching out a simple drive — may be hampered due to quarantine restrictions.
Looking at the broader situation also reveals other potential barriers to minimizing potential disruptions. One common aspect when resolving faults in IT infrastructures and systems could be access to complex as well as commonplace parts like fans and power equipment
A data center is involved every time we read a post on social media or order our shopping from a supermarket; but also every time a bank processes a payment, a government delivers an online service or a teacher runs a Zoom class for students stuck at home.
It is not an easy job trying to keep Data center infrastructure operational during a global pandemic. But with large enterprise and every people depending on the Internet more than ever before, there are not many options left to turn it off.
If the pandemic is to last longer than a few months and years, which is what most forecasts anticipate, some problems may also arise in the construction of new data center capacity. With users only increasing their consumption of streaming services, cloud or gaming, it is almost inevitable that more infrastructure will be needed at some point.
It seems that the data centers that power our digital lifestyles will keep running smoothly for now. But perhaps it’s time to reconsider out attitude toward these facilities, too; behind the anonymous exteriors there are people working to keep the systems we rely on up and running.
