Top three things to look for in a data centre solution provider

Running a data centre is one of the most demanding jobs in corporate life. You get a lot of grief if something goes wrong, but not a lot of pats on the back for keeping things up and running. When IT Central Station members evaluate a data centre solution provider, they’re looking at it from the trenches. A good solution must meet many criteria. According to users of Eaton backup power UPSs and PredictPulse, which monitors UPSs through the cloud, the top three things to look for in a solution are scalability, robust alerting and reporting capabilities and outstanding support. In their view, these qualities separate an effective solution from an average one. 

Data centre workloads are seldom static. They invariably grow, placing more demands on the existing infrastructure. For this reason, data centre managers prize scalability – meaning a solution that can grow in keeping with demand without creating an administrative burden in the process. For Jim H., chief building engineer at a large software R&D company, the value comes from low-effort scaling. He praised PredictPulse and Eaton backup power UPSs in this regard, saying, “The scalability is great. You usually just add in another power module. If we put in a 50 kVA unit and we want to upsize, or the customer wants to upsize, typically we can either just throw in one more power module to bring them up to double, or we just add another power module cabinet and then we add more capacity.”

Robby V., facility manager at a communications service provider with over 5,000 employees similarly noted, “The scalability is good. With the 9395s UPS units, you can buy extra pieces that connect up to the UPS which will expand the capacity of the UPS. Then you have to buy extra batteries. But you can scale it from 250 all the way up to 1.1 megawatts.”

Data centre managers want to know what’s happening in the racks and they want to be informed before an issue becomes a major problem. Alerting and reporting features are of great importance in the selection of a data centre solution provider. As Keith C., a UPS and PredictPulse user who works as a smart infrastructure consultant, BAS, at Kaiser Permanente, explained, “We had an air conditioning problem and we had no monitoring on that equipment. The PredictPulse alerted us that the room was too hot and we were able to solve the problem before it damaged our UPS. It saved our company from having downtime.”

Trend reports are useful too, as Keith C. shared. He said, “The monthly reporting is one of the most valuable features. It gives us an overview of the last month of its operation and we can see trends that are showing improvements or where availability and performance are decreasing.” PredictPulse reporting gives him visibility into his UPS equipment through the reporting.

Given the pressures that data centre managers work under, it’s understandable that they expect support that goes beyond the minimum effort required. In this context, PredictPulse users were pleased with Eaton’s support for the product. It embodied the kind of support they would want with any data centre solution provider. For example, Ray P. said, “Their service and their relationship with their customers is their biggest value, absolutely, compared to the competitors that I've dealt with... the service organisation of Eaton is one of their strongest points.”

Keith C. echoed this sentiment, saying, “When we call them, they're knowledgeable. They listen to our questions, they walk us through the steps to go through the process to fix it ourselves. And if not, then they pass it on to have someone come out or to someone else to call us back.”

Tim C., data centre manager at Travelport, simply said, “Eaton's technical support has been great. They're top-notch.” Bitsy B., a senior manager at Kaiser Permanente commented, “One of the pros of PredictPulse is the majority of our UPSs and the support has been phenomenal. They seem very open to work with us on improvements for future releases and to find out more about what we need as well.”

A vice president of colocation data centre operations that uses Eaton UPSs finds value in an integrated approach, stating, “We like the closeness of Eaton's manufacturing to their technical team – the way they're entwined – so that they experience lessons learned a lot quicker than an outside, third-party team that would be doing the support and feeding back to the factory. Eaton's service and engineers were one of the deciding factors for us.”

For more insights into how Eaton backup power UPSs and PredictPulse positively impacts data centre operations, visit IT Central Station.