Advise:
Infrastructure services are designed to assist clients across the product lifecycle for their servers, storage and networking. This starts with advisory services to help clients evaluate and plan infrastructure solutions. TLS offers architectural design services to help design infrastructure solutions that meet client needs. Design services are available for IBM products as well as for Cisco networking solutions. They include resources to review solution requirements and collaborate with the client to develop comprehensive project plans, technical design, and implementation plans.
Build:
Once the solution is designed, you can count on TLS to build the solution. That means installation and de-installation services, as well as deployment and configuration services. Consider that “60% of the downtime events reported were due to configuration errors — and 60% of those deployments were completed by mostly internal IT personnel.” Relying on the product experts can avoid many of those initial common deployment errors.
Operate:
With the increasing complexity of data centers and daily essential tasks, sometimes you just need help with basic tasks – either because you run a remote data center or to free up your IT staff for more strategic tasks. Our field technicians can help you with operational activities like power cycling servers, confirming the status of system indicators, inserting/removing backup tape cartridges, validating port connections, or performing activity on hot pluggable devices. They can also help with systems configuration changes and re-imaging.
Moving, upgrading or consolidating your data center(s)? TLS provides site relocation services to manage and execute the end-to-end breakdown and setup of your data center. These tasks are available services under IBM Project Services for Infrastructure.
IBM can also take on strategic support roles to assist clients with hardware and software delivery, vendor management, change management, availability management, inventory, and overall IT asset management. IBM works with clients to customize the services they most need to complement their IT staff’s management of the data center, providing assurance that new IT initiatives won’t be impeded by the day-to-day management tasks.
Optimize:
To maintain resiliency, it’s important to focus on optimization. That includes conducting regular health checks to assess best practices and identifying areas of improvement to mitigate security and performance risks. Quick health checks are available for IBM and non-IBM servers and storage for basic operational and performance.
In addition to quick health checks, a more in-depth health check is available for networking, including the option to assess hardware health, security risks, and OS levels, review inventory coverage, and conduct topology mapping. Optimization services are available under IBM Project Services for Infrastructure and for Enterprise Networking.
Optimizing the data center includes ensuring existing solutions are sustainable and that disposal processes follow industry regulations. Many organizations, particularly those in the public, financial services and healthcare sectors, have regulations that require them to secure the privacy of personal information (PI) and sensitive personal information (SPI). Technology Lifecycle Services offers IBM® Media Retention Services for IBM Infrastructure and third party products. They allow clients to retain possession of the defective media when being replaced by way of a service activity. This helps to ensure proper controls associated with protection of PI and SPI.
IBM® Media Destruction Services provides lifecycle management and redisposition data management services across the data center, including destruction, data wiping, decommissioning and IT asset disposition. IBM provides expanded support for various drives, including components such as hard-disk drives, solid state drives, flash storage, CDs, DVDs and more.
As the product lifecycle reaches its end, it’s time to refresh. When clients need help to manage heritage equipment after a migration, IBM Asset Recovery and Disposition Services enable a circular economy from providing IT recovery value to reuse in services to driving actions to reduce environmental impact for sustainability Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) reporting.
Conclusion
Managing and protecting your infrastructure and data center investments and consistently maintaining high availability for mission-critical workloads can be challenging. TLS can advise on infrastructure strategy, build out infrastructure solutions, operate the data center on a day to day basis and optimize infrastructure solutions through to end of life.
Find out more about IBM TLS infrastructure services. Explore the full scope of TLS offerings on IBM Technology Lifecycle Services web pages and see why you should choose TLS as your strategic partner for support and services across the data center.