Data centers are expensive to build and run. A data center can cost $600 to $1,100 per square foot. A lot of that is storage infrastructure where the data permanently resides, and maintaining that equipment is also pretty expensive.
You automatically get OEM maintenance if you buy new storage infrastructure for your data center. However, that maintenance and support are often limited to the end of service life (EOSL), which at the very least, is just three years.
After that, the OEM may not offer maintenance. Alternatively, they may only provide it at exorbitantly higher rates, labeling it as support for legacy equipment.
Is it worth it? Are there any alternatives you can consider?
Third-party maintenance may be the answer. In this article, we will:
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Infrastructure and operations teams today are under enormous pressure to cut down costs.
Even though Gartner predicted worldwide IT spending would increase by three percent in 2022, many organizations may need to cut back on operational expenses due to rising inflation, higher energy prices, and other geopolitical factors.
Data centers typically require dedicated maintenance for their servers, storage, and other parts of the infrastructure. Manufacturers usually provide these managed services for maintenance, but that comes at a cost. However, those costs can quickly go up once the equipment reaches the end of service.
Now, even if the equipment is working perfectly fine, the manufacturer would still consider it legacy and may charge higher rates for maintaining it. Such a trend has taken place with major manufacturers of data center equipment.
As companies running these data centers risk expensive downtimes, they often extend maintenance with the OEM at relatively higher rates. There’s no doubt that OEM maintenance for such critical equipment is reliable, but the higher maintenance costs can negatively impact operational expenses.
Data centers gave two choices as their storage equipment nears EOSL. Either they continue to use the existing equipment and pay extensively for OEM maintenance, or they refresh their infrastructure by buying the latest equipment.
Depending on the storage requirements, upgrading can be costly, pricing out anywhere from a few hundred thousand to millions of dollars. On the other hand, it may not appear logical to spend so much on maintaining storage that has technically reached its service capacity.
Unfortunately, expensive maintenance is often bait manufacturers use to motivate their customers to upgrade their infrastructure. Even if the equipment has a few good years left, data centers and other IT enterprises with significant storage needs end up upgrading infrastructure to avoid paying high maintenance for something that supposedly wouldn’t last very long.
Moreover, upgrading may be more complex, especially in a multi-vendor environment where EOSL terms vary. Manufacturers decide when they stop producing a product and stop supporting it. EOSL terms may even vary by series from the same manufacturer.
Once your storage equipment or any part of the infrastructure reaches EOSL, consider upgrading.
However, EOSL doesn’t always mean that the equipment is defunct. While it’s old and vulnerable to faults, it’s probably not dysfunctional.
With proper maintenance, even equipment that has reached its EOSL can go beyond. But is it worth taking the risk of continuing reliance on what can be considered legacy by manufacturer standards? In some cases, it may make business sense.
In many instances, enterprises cannot upgrade equipment because other parts of infrastructure or applications may be dependent on it.
The equipment may still be performing well in some cases.
In the former case, upgrading isn’t a possibility without reducing co-dependence. In the latter, upgrading can be considered an unnecessary expense.
That said, keeping storage equipment that has reached EOSL has its risks. As it’s old, it may be more vulnerable to faults. However, you can mitigate that with constant monitoring and dedicated maintenance.
In storage, using old equipment may not be as risky if the performance requirements haven’t changed.
It may make sense to upgrade if the data center requires performance improvements in its key performance indicators like power usage effectiveness or cooling capacity factor.
Moreover, sticking with existing storage can free up money for expansion (buying new equipment to store more data).
Extending the life of existing storage can save you money in the long run. You’ll eventually need to upgrade to the latest models. However, by extending the usage of the existing equipment, you can get more value out of it.
When adjusted for what you’ll spend on maintenance, you can redirect the savings to more pressing business needs or innovative solutions for enhancing overall performance, such as better cooling technology.
Third-party maintenance providers can bridge the gap between manufacturer-recommended EOSL and the demise of equipment. PivIT’s OneCall maintenance program can provide support for storage infrastructure that has reached EOSL at relatively lower costs than the premium you would pay OEMs.
For starters, many OEMs would simply not offer maintenance post-EOSL. But if they do, it’s relatively higher than what you were paying. OneCall can provide the same maintenance they would without a premium price.
This way, OneCall enables data centers and other enterprises to extend their storage lifecycle by as many as 18 to 24 months.
You can continue to use the same storage in your data center without worrying about downtimes because of a lack of maintenance or spending millions on upgrading sooner than you need to.
Consider the example of an existing OneCall customer that saved nearly $50,000 on maintenance of their 3PAR storage arrays. Maintenance from HPE, the manufacturer of the arrays, would have cost $93,000. On the other hand, OneCall offered the same service at $44,000.
But that’s not all. The quality and reliability of maintenance with OneCall are comparable with that of OEM and, in some cases, may even be better.
You get short service level agreements and dedicated spares at a location near your data center.
The most significant benefit of moving to OneCall for storage is that you can save on operational expenses and move them to capital expenditure, investing in scaling your IT footprint.
The alternatives for continuing OEM maintenance for storage that has reached EOSL are limited. You can upgrade to the latest hardware, an even more expensive measure. Alternatively, you can opt for maintenance from another provider, like PivIT.
At OneCall, we’ve helped many clients save on maintenance of legacy storage equipment when OEMs stopped providing support or raised the rates significantly.
If you believe in the old saying, don’t fix what isn’t broken, continuing to use existing storage infrastructure may result in cost savings in the long run.
The best way to make this decision is to inspect the state of your storage, analyze performance metrics, and complete a feasibility check for upgrade costs. Then, if it makes sense from both technical and business points, retain the storage past EOSL with maintenance from OneCall.
Data centers are expensive to build and run. With OneCall from PivIT, you may find you’ve uncovered what is the perfect alternative to extend the life of your storage infrastructure.