Posted on Tuesday, March 7, 2017
The end of OEM warranty support is a serious issue for businesses – many simply do not fully understand their options, or the implications of maintaining the status quo. CTOs are faced with the prospect of increased costs for maintenance, or having to assume responsibility for monitoring and maintaining each storage unit. Worse still, depending on the platform, they may have to do so without the OEM’s monitoring and diagnostic tools.
A difficult decision
This presents the CTO with a difficult decision. They can move forward with a costly, OEM-mandated maintenance or refresh package, attempt to maintain systems in-house without the assistance of official monitoring tools and spare parts, or partner with a third party who can provide assistance.
In the interests of minimising risk, many CTOs will take the easy option – signing up for costly after-warranty OEM maintenance or upgrading to newer OEM-supported hardware. But in doing so, they give up the opportunity to extend the return on investment from existing systems.
Proactive maintenance is key
Proactive maintenance is crucial to reducing the time to repair. By being able to identify potential problems early, engineers can source replacement parts and plan to have them fitted before there is any impact on operations. This early warning allows spares to be dispatched for fitting within minutes, significantly reducing time to repair.
Central to proactive maintenance is the ability to gain immediate and secure access to the service processor. Engineers are able to identify and resolve low level issues before they escalate, preventing more serious failures. Without the OEM’s tools however, this is virtually impossible.
The RAYTRIX™ difference
Without access to OEM license-compliant remote monitoring tools, many third party maintenance providers are unable to assist with heartbeat monitoring and remote access for diagnosis. As part of a support and maintenance contract with CDS, our engineers use our unique RAYTRIX™ tool for EMC Symmetrix machines, to monitor and diagnose client systems as part of a comprehensive proactive service.
Raytrix™ is fully compliant and compatible with EMC’s licensing terms.
RAYTRIX™ ESS (Enterprise Storage Solution) offers the same functionality as OEM equivalents for maintaining Symmetrix products. Our engineers are able to perform heartbeat monitoring, event log analysis and diagnostics remotely and securely. Available 7x24x365 , our Operations Center is constantly checking events from client systems, identifying potential problems and resolving issues.
All without compromising the integrity, operation or stability of your systems in any way.
When coupled with an OEM-beating maintenance contract, RAYTRIX™ is the ultimate tool for protecting your pre- and post-warranty assets. To learn more, or to arrange a demo of the RAYTRIX™ remote monitoring system, please get in touch.