Managed Services «standard» for EMC Centera
With the Managed Services «standard» for EMC Centera the operating of the EMC Centera archive infrastructure is completely out tasked to Informatio. The standard version of Managed Service is ideally suited for customers who do not need an application specific reporting of the capacity development.
Health Report Receipt
The daily receipt of the health report is verified. As EMC Centera systems also send Alerts via email, the correct receipt of the health report is the way to ensure that this critical but sometimes unreliable way of notification works.
Alert Monitoring
Should an alert arrive, it is classified based on the Symptom Code as being at Warning, Error or Critical Error level. Depending on Symptom code a reaction with administrative measures or from EMC Customer Service is necessary.
Notification of customer in case of alert
After classification of the alert the customer is notified about the alert and the necessary actions to be taken. Customers of the Managed Service “light” for EMC Centera need to perform the necessary actions themselves or Informatio performs administrative measures on behalf of the customer.
Reaction to alerts with administrative measures
Administrative measures necessary after an alert range from activities like changing settings of replication to changing application integration specific parameters. Based on the urgency and type of actions required they are planned and performed in co-ordination with the customer.
Control of EMC Service Request progress
An alert normally leads to an EMC Service request being created to address the situation at the customer site. Informatio verifies the creation and progress made in the service request at least on a weekly basis. The progress is tracked in the weekly report.
Upgradeplanning
EMC sometimes announces the End of service life of certain CentraStar versions. To prevent the situation where a no longer supported release is used in production environments upgrades need to be planned roughly every year.
For each upgrade the applications need to be verified for support of the new CentraStar release. The upgrade of an existing or the integration with a new archive application may be another reason for an upgrade being required.
Proactive weekly monitoring
The Managed Service includes a weekly proactive remote monitoring of the infrastructure. The monitoring takes place via remote access using modem, VPN or Citrix access methods.
Signs for potential failures are checked and all security relevant settings verified and corrected if necessary.
Growth estimation
An important task during the weekly monitoring represents the tracking of all relevant capacity developments. The important figures are listed and graphically represented over a one year period. The estimation on a weekly and monthly basis calculates how long the available capacity will suffice. If certain threshold values are passed the customer is notified so that budgetary cycles can be followed and no urgent capacity extensions are required.
Weekly report
Every week after the proactive monitoring tasks are completed the weekly report is prepared and sent to the customer. An overview using traffic light colouring shows the status of the system at a glance.
