Smart hands are outsourced data center technicians who perform physical tasks onsite. They are a service provided by colocation data centers or other third-parties and commonly utilized by organizations that require an onsite presence but do not have the resources, personnel, proximity, or desire to do it themselves.
Smart hands are typically skilled workers with the technical expertise to meet an organization’s day-to-day operations, maintenance, and troubleshooting needs.
What Services Do Smart Hands Provide?
The tasks that smart hands typically perform in a data center include:
- Moves, adds, changes, and decommissions. Smart hands can physically install or remove equipment such as servers, switches, or storage devices and perform other changes as instructed.
- Cable management. Technicians can maintain the proper organization and labeling of physical power and network cables.
- Rack and stack. Smart hands can load racks with servers and related hardware and deploy them in the data center.
- Maintenance. Technicians can perform routine maintenance tasks like cleaning servers, replacing faulty components, and updating software and firmware.
- Asset audits. Smart hand services can perform physical audits, tag assets, and update documentation to maintain an accurate asset inventory.
- Troubleshooting. In the event of unexpected downtime, smart hands can help identify the issue and find the best possible solution to restore service.
How to Simplify the Management of Smart Hands
Smart hands are highly beneficial to organizations that cannot be onsite but require assistance performing physical tasks. However, with Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software, remote data center managers can get even more value out of their technicians.
Some of the ways DCIM enables more efficient and productive smart hands include:
- Built-in work order management. DCIM software automates routine processes and workflows associated with smart hands services, including requests, approvals, and work orders.
- Ticketing integration. Modern DCIM solutions can seamlessly integrate with ticketing systems like ServiceNow, Jira, BMC, and Ivanti/Cherwell to reduce manual effort and swivel chair management.
- Clear, visual work orders. Detailed work orders with rack elevations and port-level information ensure work is performed quickly and accurately.
- Monitoring and reporting. Track the status of all changes with information such as who created the ticket, work order details, start date, current status, actions taken, and complete date.
- Voice-response guided asset audits. One technician with a barcode/QR code scanner can audit racks faster and more accurately than traditional methods.
- Electronic cabinet door lock access control. Remotely lock and unlock doors to only allow access to authorized technicians and see an audit log of who is attempting access and if they were successful.
Want to see how Sunbird’s leading DCIM software makes it easier to manage your smart hands? Get your free test drive now!