Which data center company doesn’t dream of expanding its operations to the new markets? It is only natural that once you settle in comfortably with your venture, the vision of making even bigger of a profit soon pops in. The first foothold that needs to be established for the future growth is choosing the DCIM software that you will rely on to manage, organize and monitor the components of your data center.
And, as our most recent case study of a certain British company proves, the sooner you find the right solution for yourself, the sooner you can start branching out safely. Feel welcome to follow us on this insightful talk with Chris Murrell, the Chief Technology Officer at Netcetera!
The struggle was real
Today Netcetera is one of Europe’s leading web hosting service providers, supplying customers worldwide with top-notch colocation, dedicated servers and managed infrastructure services scaled perfectly to their needs.
Chris admits that with such an extensive offer come great demands. Being active on the market since 1996, the company had to find a viable way to centralize all their daily activities from device assignment and supervision to client management. Curious about how Netcetera was able to keep all those aspects under control, we asked Chris what kind of software they used before moving to EasyDCIM:
“We relied on our own, in-built DCIM solution to manage PDUs, switches and other devices, but all of that on a very basic level. Nothing as advanced as EasyDCIM which is an all-in-one control panel for everything you need – adding switches or PDU devices to a server, handling clients and so on.”
As a matter of fact, Netcetera is not the first company that we interviewed which developed their own, in-house software. But just like in other cases, instead of sinking money into the current tool and expanding it with further features, they opted for an external, fully-fledged solution. The choice which, as Chris remarks, was simply a much more rational and easier alternative for them at the time: “We were looking for a solution to let clients manage their dedicated servers as well as reboot and reinstall them whenever needed.“ While the proprietary software they developed was fairly practical for the internal use, it simply allowed for very little freedom when it comes to remote server management from the client’s side.
All pieces of data center inventory finally in place
DCIM software guarantees that all tasks within data center are done exactly the same way each time they are performed. Chris reveals that using EasyDCIM, they were able to reduce IT costs and by freeing up those extra resources – increase service quality: “We have been running our data center for over 28 years and have grown a substantial customer base that is constantly growing every day, in large extent thanks to EasyDCIM.”
During our interview, Chris pointed out multiple ways in which EasyDCIM streamlined the internal, day-to-date tasks flow in Netcetera:
“We use EasyDCIM not only for clients but also ourselves. We have added all our PDUs and switches in it so it’s now easy for us to discover why, for example, a certain device didn’t turn on or off as wanted. EasyDCIM is great for managing all sorts of devices and controlling our infrastructure in overall.“
Imagine a day of work without having to carry out any of the menial tasks ever again. This is how Chris and his fellow staff members felt after delegating the control over their devices fully to EasyDCIM. Before, they had to first find the correct server, then the rack, and lastly, go through all the switches to see what port they were connected to. “With EasyDCIM we are able to look up the server and view all the relates switches, ports and PDUs right away” – Chris comments.
Fostering the culture of environment-friendly data center
Optimizing the daily work is just one of the benefits Netcetera discovered after centralizing their infrastructure management into EasyDCIM. Another perk was the ability to further reduce the carbon footprint of their data center facility by increasing power efficiency.
The policy of green hosting that the company has been guided by since its formation is being executed through multiple means, including the routine monitoring of data center devices usage.
“Every month we are doing a special report detailing how much power usage our PDUs generate so before EasyDCIM we had to implement an external network monitoring software for this purpose. EasyDCIM provides us by default with all the statistics we are concerned about the most and allows us to access them via intelligent graphs. As a matter of fact, we used all different kinds of software for traffic monitoring but only with EasyDCIM it’s all there in one place.“
But EasyDCIM is not only about empowering data center owners. We wanted to give end clients the same amount of freedom when it comes to the supervision of their servers and real-time power usage straight within the confines of a dedicated customer panel. Did we accomplish that? Chris’s final words seem to be speaking in favor of this fact: “Our audience can easily see how much traffic they’re using and we can bill them every month which is just the perfect solution for us. Also, having remote access to all basic server commands is a huge convenience for them on an everyday basis.”
Summing up
All good things come to an end and so did our wonderful chat with Chris Murrell. But before parting ways, we could not help ourselves but to humbly ask Chris if he would recommend our software to other entrepreneurs. He was more than generous with his response:
“Oh, I would recommend EasyDCIM hands down. It has everything in one place, it’s easy to manage and the support is great as well. Whenever I have an issue or get stuck on something, I message the team and they get back to me with further instructions or working solutions.”
We are ever so grateful to Netcetera for this huge vote of confidence. Being able to do what we are passionate about and helping other businessmen at the same time is for us the best kind of a reward we could ever wish for.
Not a part of the EasyDCIM family yet? Feel invited to power our ranks! See our system in action and join now to make your data center management a labor of love!